Thursday, July 24, 2008

McPeople (parts one and two)

{note: I've decided to transfer the following two posts,  which are from another blog of mine  http://www.myspace.com/individualperson1, to this place, since I do think, (however vernacular and informal-seeming, some of the ideas in them may be), that they constitute some progress toward--if not finished examples of-- a way to think about some socio-psychological aspects of the theory of healthy culture (which of course also implies a theory of sick culture). Later I will publish a third essay (which i am still working on) that I intend to be a kind of analyic etiology of Slave Culture as I define it below, and which will probably be the end of this line of thought for the time being--I-P}

McPeople  Today I had occasion to tell a story from the person who made the movie "Supersize" me (the story is from the book written after the movie). The story tells of how the author and a friend of his had a little tradition of hiding food in each others offices which would of course eventually go bad and stink up the place. Sort of a dubiously funny gag, but the gist of the story is that one day the author hid a McDonald's cheeseburger in his friends office and....well...nothing ever happened. Months and months went by without its being noticed and the sandwich was only discovered by chance when his friend was packing up things to move to another office. Moreover, when it was found, the cheeseburger pretty much looked like it did on the day it was put there. The point of the story is that only real food--food that was alive and relatively good, can go "bad", while there are some things (the person I told this story to replied with a similar tale involving Twinkies) that, never having been real food, even bacteria have too much self-respect to eat. After that interchange I got to thinking about human evil in some kind of analogous terms. I was thinking about obvious "criminals" and their equally obvious "crimes of commission" such as murder or some other explicit act of violence, as examples of what is usually the moral "stench" of obvious "rottenness", and comparing this to the kind of everyday "odorless" (and usually legal) evil that almost everyone participates in (for example the blythe production and consumption of, say plastic or slave-grown chocolates, or anything else that makes one complicit in violence and misery on a scale involving millions). I was also comparing the former, more obvious form of criminality with the ubiquitous "crime of omission" of passive and resigned participation in the system which indirectly and directly produces the situations that lead both to the more gross and smelly kind of rottenness which we sometimes see on the news and to even more insidious things. This latter form of criminality is the most odorless of all. Actually it can even be "artificially perfumed" since behaviour that has the ultimate effect of enabling a fundamentally unjust and unhealthy way of life, can dress itself up as "sustainable" or "green" and anything else that will sell... Anyway, my thought was that the people unconsciously involved in these latter kinds of relatively mundane and "odorless" forms of evil are like the cheeseburger that cannot rot because it was never fresh--was never really even food--in the first place. These would be people who have no sense of guilt or responsibility because, although they are daily and willingly more involved in turning, nature, culture and the future into garbage than any person currently in prison, are so completely unconscious of the inherent relationships and responsibilities of existing in a shared world, as to be almost completely ethically and morally numb and disoriented. These would be individuals who can't really even be considered "evil people"  because they never really reached the level of being "people" in the first place. Maybe you could call them "McPeople". I suppose "McPeople" could just be my choice of moniker for the kind of human pseudo-personality described in books like Huxley's "Brave New World", Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man", "the Organization Man", "People of the Lie" or I suppose any number of others, but I think its worth while going into the matter to see what the differences and similarities might be. In my head a "McPerson" (as apposed, both to a mere "Bad Person") is rarely directly physically violent and certainly not openly so. They are often psychologically and emotionally violent, but even this may not be often obvious or overt. They are usually law abiding, obedient and efficient. Many very much identify with their job and are often managers or professionals of some kind or have somesuch asperations. The "Dreams" of McPeople are generally in harmony with the "American Dream" of individual "success" in whatever terms are most current. They are often evolved in some kind of McRelgion which extends their shallow and selfish dreams into the other world, though just as often they can be atheistic worshipers of some kind of McScience, often having pronounced social Darwinist implications. I suppose the overriding character trait of such personalities would be a faculty for denial, distraction and "other-directed" self-betrayal. Most of all, McPeople engage in a great deal of consumption, whether of, legal or illegal drugs, junk food, junk TV, junk technology, or junk "relationships", though many are "workaholics" and paradoxically consume "work" as their distraction of choice... It is just now occurring to me that McPeople must be those that occupy the "McWorld" of Benjamen Barbers book "Jihad vs McWorld", a book which I have read but am just now relating to this McPeople idea. Since I pretty much agree with a lot of the general thesis of that book, I feel obliged now to consider "Jihaders" as well as "McPeople"{see footnote1}. Presumably Jihaders are more or less at war with McPeople and the McWorld of corporate values and oblivious consumption that they represent. It makes sense to me that, just as there is McReligion and McScience, so there is "Jihad Religion" and "Jihad Science" (the latter would I guess describe the world view of certain forms of the ecology movement and the Scientific Jihads of Communism and the French Revolution before that). Of course in the case of the Greens, there can be "Green" McPeople and well as "Green" Jihaders).  As I recall, in Barbers book, Jihadists are paradoxically involved with and even dependant in some ways, on the products of the McWorlders and can behave in ways that paradoxically, ultimately strengthen the grip of McWorld. At any rate Barber doesn't credit his Jihadists with being much of an improvement on their enemies. As I recall, this is owning to their decidedly factional, totalitarian, self-righteous (see footnote2) and anti-democratic tendencies. In fact Barber decries the anti-democratic tendencies on both sides of this division. Well I don't know if I would completely agree with Barbers conception of Democracy, but, insofar as these kinds of highly stereotypical ruminations have any validity or do any good (a question I intend to return to), I can certainly see his general point. More likely than not Jihaders, when they "win the franchise" so to speak, will just become McPersons just as McPersons who happen to lose their jobs will tend to become Jihaders (since McWorld currently has the upper hand, it is only Jihaders who are likely to be imprisoned and thus put in the category or your normal "criminal"). Anyhow, from my own point of view, neither group approaches Individual-Personhood with its factional-identity-and -alienated-worldview-transcending consciousness of fundamental togetherness and the need for both inner and outer healing... I don't think our culture has fully perfected the recipe for McPeople, (or for Jihaders either) but the main ingredients common to both are surely a cosmology of apartness, identity-politics or apartness, rituals of apartness, and infrastructures of apartness, whether these take traditional (Religious) or modern (Scientific) forms (or even "Postmodern" forms). As is the case with confusion and war of any kind, the only real future, (or authentic present) lies in possibility of creatively transcending the assumptions behind the whole  culture war dynamic and so courageously demonstrating in ones own life, the meaning and beauty of real Peace, (which, in its way is an adventure more harrowing and glorious than war ever was or can ever can be...) Anyway, as I said, I am quite leery of all of these labels I am bandying about. My only excuse is that people can't seem to help bandying about labels, and its possible that some good can come from the above bandying, provided that it's understood that all the "types" in question are just "Ideal Orienting types" as the sociologist say, that is; very limited abstractions consciously being used in a limited way to get a handle on a certain kind of phenomenon. (Though I must say that I think the concept of "Individual-Person" as I understand it is in a somewhat different category than this). Suffice to say that nobody is essentially or fundamentally either a "Jihader" or a "McPerson"(or a "Criminal" either for that matter) and that, in my opinion, everybody is fundamentally and essentially an Individual-Person, whether they are conscious of this or not. Maybe the main use of this little post is to inform those who see no real options in the world other then being what amounts to a McPerson or a Jihader (or a Criminal of the more traditional sort) that there is indeed another choice; that of moving toward Individual-Personhood and a culture of paradox-affirming togetherness. Since my life is about exploring and developing this very possibility, and since I feel currently pretty damn alone in the attempt, you can be very sure of being sincerely welcomed if you should truly want to participate in this enterprise. Welcome and Thanks, I-P {footnote1: I am following Barber in using the term "Jihad" but I feel the need to be fair to Islam (according to me there is good and evil in everything) by saying that I know the concept of Jihad does not always, or even usually, refer to some holy war against others, but, at least in its highest sense,to the struggle of a person with their own stupidity and pride. In that sense, especially if one includes narrowmindedness and rigid dogma in the list of that which is to be struggled with, then the more "Jihad" the better. My use in the above essay refers to the shadow-side of the Jihad only.} {footnote2. It occurs to me that I am probably sounding pretty self-rightous myself in parts of this entry. At least I think that, within the context of the dominant, hypercompetative culture, my frustration could easily be understood that way. I could (and should) devote a whole essay to how the childish competativeness of such an assumption as well as the false logic around it is part of the problem (As though the point was not to change the collective situation but just to "make points" by bragging about how I dont  participate in this or that aspect of it or as though, in order to name the problem of greehouse gases one had either to stop breathing or admit to being a hypocrite). Suffice to say for now, that I am not at all claiming not to participate in aspects of sick culture (how can one not participate in some aspects of it?) nor am I trying to one-up anyone who happens to participate in some way that I don't. What I know is possible, (and what I want to make my posts a gesture toward) is collectively diagnosing the sick culture that we are All involved in in one way or another (to varying degrees at differents times and in different circumstances), and collectively comming to terms about, practicing, (or at least making the world safe for), Healthy Culture. Willingness to do this counts as goodwill in my book. Just as extreem dissatisfaction with the current inner/outer status quo, (rather than either oblivious unconsciousness or self-righteous and compassionless denial and distain) counts as Good Taste. Faith in the reality of primary togetherness and in the possibility of moving toward its realization is what I would call Good Faith. And finally, Good Sense is the sensibility that can not only acknowledge participation in both sick culture and healthy culture, but see that acknowledgement as part of the first concious step toward cultivating the latter. It is these things; Good Will, Good Faith, Good Taste, and Good Sense that keep one from McPersonhood or "Jihadism" and not some mythical perfection regarding ones own (or anyone elses) outward participation in sick culture...} Mcpeople 2 (slavery)   It occurs to me after some reflection that the whole issue of McPeople and Jihaders,  has a lot to do with Slavery. By Slavery I mean any directly or indirectly coerced fear-based mal-employment, as determined both by the kind of work involved and the way in which the work is done. This definition includes dept slavery, wage slavery, as well as chattel slavery...and yet I would also like to explicitly include the kinds of psychological slavery that are involved in all of the above but that might also translate into less orderly, systematic and/or economically significant forms of abuse and coercion. I'd also like to make the clarifying point that, in my definition of  a "Slave" this inner, psychological slavery is a necessary ingredient. What I mean is that a Slave is only really a Slave for me (rather just a person trapped in a slave system), to the extent that the person has internalized a coercion/ fear-based way of thinking and feeling. What I am trying to make explicit by this way of looking at it is the fact that Freedom is like Happiness, in that, just as person who is happy wants everyone Else to be happy, so a person who is Free wants others to be Free and that, correspondingly, the impulse or desire to enslave others is nothing more than a sign of ones own enslavement. Thus a "master" is basically a form of "higher-ranking" slave (I speak here from the slaves point of view since from the point of view of freedom what is essential is the condition of slavery itself, distinctions of  rank being only relavent within the slave mentality itself). Thus a slave who has assimilated the regime of slavery (this being the only true kind of slave) will in turn seek to become a "master", if not officially by moving up in the coercive hierarchy and becoming a foreman for example, then informally by brutalizing, manipulating or enslaving whoever or whatever they can).  I want to make clear that its not the feeling of being coerced or afraid that creates the slave but rather, it is the act of incorporating into oneself (and assimilating oneself to) the extant regime of fear and inner and outer coercion itself that makes for enslavement. Those still alive to the struggle for inner and outer freedom will never actually be slaves in my view, whatever their outer situation. Ironically, the negative assimilation that makes for "slavehood" happens more readily when the fear itself is repressed and denied, so as to enable the illusion that "mastery" is the opposite of slavery rather then just a part of it. For instance, in the moment where a larger or more poweful slave, or perhaps a slave foreman, is oppressing (or even just thinking about oppressing) another slave, the former is likely indulging in some false illusion of  such ostensibly one-sided "mastery" over the latter. In that moment, such a person will have lost any sense of their authenic selfnature (and the Freedom to Be and express that SelfNature that real Freedom is), and instead will be able to conceive of  "freedom" only as "freedom to onesidely oppress and control" (which is not a freedom at all but a delusion). It is with such impulses toward "mastery" that slaves confirm and renew their existence as institutionalized slaves--assimilating, rather then creatively adapting to and challenging, the regime of inner and outer coercion that slavery essentially is. Since, from this point of view, people reveal themselves as slaves (or better, betray themselves into slavery) by inwardly assimilating to any form or regime of coercion, it can be claimed (very much beyond the usual ironies of masters/owners being bound by what they "own") that to be--or even want to be-- a "master" is to actually confirm oneself a slave, in that such a desire indicates an assimilation to a fear-based inner and outer order of things. By this definition, (which is unusual only because it is both broad and deep rather than because it is unreasonable), it seems clear to me that the whole of the culture we live in is "slave culture"; IE; a culture of inner and outer coercion. Ok. So now I want to relate all of this slavery talk to this McPeople Business. From this angle its clear that the a McPerson is simply someone who is a Slave in the sense that they have internalized and assimilated themselves to regimes of inner/outer coercion to such an extent that they can conceive of nothing more than "moving up" (or at least no moving down) within the regime, having totally lost sight of, and being no longer able to imagine much less work toward, anything else. I regard this as essentially a kind of unconsciousness/numbness-enabled denial. What i mean is that all the mal-consumption I attributed to Mcpeople in my previous description amounts to the necessary consumption of various kinds of numbing anesthetic and denial-facilitating distractions; distractions from the reality of the McPerson's inner and outer Slavery and from the existential pain of their ultimately meaningless and meaninglessly destructive lives. In a sense, private "ownership", even of inanimate objects, can be understood as a kind of transferred "mastery" in this way of thinking and so must indicate some degree of assimilation to the regime of slavery on the part of the "owner/master". Not surprisingly, the object "owned" is usually produced though some form of economic slavery/mal-employment, a circumstance which further confirms that conclusion. I suppose that from this point of view "Jihaders" could be described as "slaves in revolt". I say "slaves" in revolt, rather than "individual-persons in revolt" because I think what makes a "Jihader" a "Jihader" rather than a consciously individual-person is precisely a lack of having fully healed from the slave/master denial and dissociation mentality. Unconsciousness of this lack of healing (which effects both the end they strive for an the means they choose to achieve it) is usually responsible for the self-righteousness and or fanaticism of the "Jihader" who very often unconsciously wants their own brand of inner and outer "mastery" rather then real inner/outer health and freedom for themselves and others. Such an attitude is facilitated by the lack of an "Integrative" (see a previous blog) by which the one-sidedness (and the one-sided assumptions) of most kinds of activism can be transcended and through which ones own "piece of the Lie" can be acknowledged and challenged at the same time the external status quo is also being addressed. The lack of such an Integrative (and the healthy world view, identity-politics and practice that goes along with it) is, I think the basic reason why historical Jihadist reform and revolutionary movements (whether religiously or "humanistically" motivated) result in variations on, rather than transcendence of, the theme of Slavery. All of this more or less equates the slave culture that produces both Jihaders and McPeople with what I call Sick Culture...at least slave culture can be called the main "socio-psycho-economic" manifestation of sick culture. This means that, as is the case with sick culture in general, we all have been initiated into this culture of misery, oppression and denial. Thus to be a conscious individually healing person cannot mean to be totally free of this master/slave mentality  (this is not even the case with children), but to be able to challenge and heal it because one is has conscious awareness of both its existence and its nature in oneself and others . Another way of saying this is to say that no one is so much a slave as someone who is unconscious of their own propensity toward inner and outer slavery; such unconsciousness is part of the Slavery itself just as true consciousness  (which I maintain is "consciousness of Togetherness") is itself a manifestation of and prelude to, greater freedom.  Like most things in Healthy Culture then, to be a conscious Individual-Person involves living a paradox. In this case it is the paradox  (which also frees the individual person from the inner tyranny of self-righteousness and ego) that they are free only to the extent that they remain conscious of (and so not the unwitting victim of) the sick/slave culture which they are in, and which, to some degree is also "in them" since it is the culture that they have been initiated into from birth. One could say that freedom itself is not so much a static finished state but a conscious movement in the direction of greater and greater manifestations of itself both inwardly and outwardly and that this movement can only be maintained if motivated by aware acknowledgment of, and also progressive engagement with, the tendency toward inner and outer coercion which is always ready to take over again and, (usually through the enticements of "mastery"), turn us back into unconscious slaves (which is the only kind of slave there is really). {note:I suppose there are some who would like to maintain a idea of positive "Mastery"; perhaps to make a distinction between "false Mastery" and real Mastery". I have thought about this and really don't find the need to do so. I think that even the idea of "spiritual Mastery" just tempts one to a kind of spiritual materialism that just feeds the ego and enslaves the soul. Rather than Mastering oneself or others, or this or that skill, I would like to substitute the idea of "Friendship" and of "Befriending" (in the sense of listening to, supporting, and challenging) oneself, or this or that skill or art. This feels much better to me. To quote a song of mine: "Whenever there is Mastery, there is Slavery, and when you're thinking like that my Friend, you will never be Free"}  --I-P

posted by: piankhy | 13:59 | comments

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Truth, Beauty, and "Virtue"

{Note: I republish here--with a few changes--my online response to a general question about the relationship of Truth to Beauty. Hopefully it serves as a compliment to and elaboration on my "Life-Logic" post, which is in the archives...--I-P}

Truth, Beauty, and "Virtue"

{Note: I republish here--with a few changes and a postscript--my online response to a general question about the relationship of Truth to Beauty. Hopefully it serves as a compliment to and elaboration on my "Life-Logic" post, which is in the archives...--I-P}


Hello everyone,

"Is Beauty Truth (or Truth Beauty)?"

Well...Yes! to me a thing is True (with a capital "T" anyway) only to the extent that it is also Beautiful, and also Good (which means that it is an "ethically appropriate" conception/expression under the circumstances) Likewise I believe that a thing is Beautiful precisely to the extent that it partakes of and reflects Truth and Goodness ("ethical appropriateness).  And lastly I think that a good sign that an act  or gesture is Good is the extent to which it is a Beautiful act in the context of what is "ultimately" True. So these three things are kind of a trinity for me (a tetrad really, though I'll stick with the trinity here since since I kind of vacillate on which of a few things would be the forth term.)

Needless to say, there are a lot of things that might be considerd beautiful these days which from this point of view are merely "hypnotic" or worse.  Actually from this point of view a lot of  "Art" can be understood as an attempt (an intrinsically ugly but usually unconsious attempt) to dissociate Beauty from Goodness and Truth so as to make it a viable commodity in a sick culture. True Beauty in such a culture as is dominant today might even involve some illegality since, being also Good and reflective of Truth, it's creation would  be seen to constitute a serious challenge to the status quo.

I am into music and song a lot these days so I think of that. Which is more beautiful? the loud  off-key singing of songs (once secretly sung in defiance of the tyranny of Mao's regime) by two old chinese friends, reunited after more than 40 years, their voices  full of genuine affection, sorrow, and celebration of  the miraculous survival, not only of each other but of each others Spirit and Good Will,  or the pitch-perfect ornamentation of some Verdi aria in a concert hall? If the context of each of these events is not artifically narrowed and flattened in a dissociated manner ,the former should,in all likelihood, be considered the more beautiful music, though probably not so beautiful as it would have been 35 years ago. moveover, I think this difference in beauty is even something I should, with practice, be able to hear,  and hear even if i was not aware of the context around the events...

   Anyway I think that, by the same token that true Beauty is in danger of being replaced by "Art", so I think most science and philosophy can be seen as unfortunate results of the devils bargain of conceptually dissociatingTruth from Beauty and Goodness so as to secure some illusory "domination" and "control" of some equally dissociated conception of "Nature".  I Certainly don't think that vivasection and suchlike practices could exist in science if the Truth that science proposed to be seeking was such an Integrative Truth as I am suggesting is Truth, nor would I expect so much of the egregious  usurpations  of  the  results of  supposedly "value-free" and "pure" research by corporate and other enitities, for purposes quite clearly evincing, not only bad taste but ill will...

I am not saying that "facts" are irrelevant and have no relationship to Truth, whether in science or in anything else, its just that, unless the search for and choice of the relevant "facts" (there are always an indefinite number of "facts" in any situation") is informed and directed by a perception of this Integral inclusive Truth, such facts as are selected will function in the service of a Lie, and will from our point of view be Lies themselves. In this sense, and  "Honest statement", if  by this we mean simply relating something that is factual, can at the same time be an "Untruthful" one if the choice of which fact to express when is not informed by Good Will, Good Faith, and Good Taste and Good Sense....

In addition to what this kind of cognitive dissociation has done in terms of Art and Science, I think our conception  and experience of "religion" and "spirituality" also suffer from and are diminished by it ...this is where I would venture to add the Idea of "Life" or "Living Spirit" as the fourth element of what I said i thought of more as a tetrad than a trinity. Since, when the Spirit is gone from a given formulation of "Truth", because that formulation ceases to be ethically appropriate "Good" under the circumstances, then the physical expressions of that no longer Living "Truth" cease to be "Beautiful" (Beauty is also, somehow "Living Beauty"), and the  "Truth", having lost its Living Spirit is no longer the Truth...

I think that in "the west" the percieved separation and sometimes dissociation of "Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life" seemed to hit its stride with plato's (and others) dissociation of Truth  from Goodness and Beauty. Plato says somewhere: "there is Truth, Goodness and Beauty: but the Greatest of these is Truth" (I have a sense that most "Sophists" would not have agreed with this, having probably had a somewhat less dissociated view of such things). Later this already dissociated "Truth"--which for Plato was a supremely subjective (I would say "hyper-subjective) "idea"--later became rather hyper-objectified (with Aristotle and subsequent "science"), as the sum of all objective "facts". Anyway I think the whole dissociation was a misperception and bad idea in the first place which probably came from folks spending too much time in cities (hyper-specialization and relatively dissociated life-styles going along with hyper-specialized and relatively dissociated forms of thought...)


I don't have the time to elaborate more on all of this right now but in my Blog there is a post called "Life-Logic" that elaborates somewhat...

take care,

I-P

post script:

I have considered calling the quality or manifestation that is both the source of this Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life, and the singular manefistation of which these four qualities are different facets, by the term "Virtue". In the past I have rejected this word because of its historically gendered associations ("virtue" among the ancient Greeks meant something akin to the essense of masculinity, while--oddly enough-- it later came to mean something like the essense of "in tact" femininity). However, I think the word has probably also always had a non-gendered sense as well (for instance it is commonly used to translate the term "Te" the "Tao Te Ching", )  so maybe, by now, its alright to use that word "Virtue" in the "Te" sense, to decribe, in one word, the quintessential essence of Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life in actual manifestation.

If so than, for the most part, I think the history of "education", both formal and informal, can be fairly well described as little else but the transmission of a sick culture in which the next generation is intimidated into trading this inherent four-fold, Individual-Personal Virtue(without even being fully conscious of its existence) for the fools gold of achievement within the dissociated and rootless, and intrinsically meaningless world of "facts", specialized fields, "Professions", "procedures" and"training".

All of which goes a long way in explaining why things are the way they are... 

--I-P

posted by: piankhy | 14:31 | comments

Thursday, March 27, 2008

{note; I posted this in my Healthy Culture group and just thought I’ d post it here too...--I-P}

I want to say something, as conversation opener, about Motivation and Intention

In Healthy Culture (and in Integral Science, the name I am giving to the part of healthy Culture that deals more or less with the mind, with Cosmology, Logic, Meaning etc..) there is the assumption of the primary togetherness of Subject and Object, of Inner and Outer, of Self and World. This assumption of fundamental togetherness has some surprising implications since it actually suggests that Both the idea of changing the world first and then (perhaps) changing oneself (the "political" idea) as well as the other Idea of first changing oneself and then the world (the "spiritual" idea) are both misconceived objectives. From the point of view of fundamental togetherness, it is only possible to change and heal the inner and the outer together, at the same time; because that is the fundamental way they exist at all.

what this means in practice is that, taking the political idea first, the goals of one-sidedly outward activism will inherently be distorted, and sabotaged by the degree to which the unattended wounds of fear-based inner issues have had a hand in assessing them and the means to them. The very inpulse to such onesidedness is can be understood as something motivated by those issues themselves as a way of self protection, but the nemesis to fear-based hubris that such an orientation implies can only be the ultimate failure of an agenda that was misconcieved and falsely motivated from the start (though unfortunately none of this might ever be admitted by those involved).

On the other hand, the illusion that political quietism is really even possible let alone Spiritual, is just as often an equally fear-based retreat; a crime of omission against the world and one of commission (essentially Fraud) against onself.

Moreover, the situation is even more subtle in that, even in the case that one tries to alternate the "spriitual" and the "political", the false seperation of the two can not but lead to my mind, to situations in which, just when my attention should be 90% focused on myself and my own shit, it is focused to that degree on the world, and visa versa...the ego, monkey-mind, or what ever you want to call it, really is just like that...

From this point of view then, the whole the issue needs to be become something like: "what gesture can I make both in this moment and in the future, to catalyze my own healing together-with that of others and the world?".

To call such an intention an "Objective" would be misleading, since the idea of an Objective implies a fundamental separation, if not necessarily of the subject from the "object" (the inner from the outer), at least of the future from the present, and past (and eternity too for that matter). So instead of talking about the above mentioned intention as an objective, I call it an "Integrative" (pronounced "In-TEG-ra-tive").

Having an Integrative means having an Intention of catalyzing ones own healing together with that of others and the world, and it means being involved in an ongoing process of experiment, hypothesis and theory regarding how best to do this. Of course this must involve some idea (at least a theory) of ones own subjective individuality, including ones "shit"; ones own subjective sick culture. It also means some idea as well about how that fits into and the outer sick culture that is around one, this then implying some idea of how to act so as to increasingly challenge both these things in the same gesture (which would then be the experiment).

Individual-Persons involved in healthy culture have or are seeking an Integrative by definition, But though its true that, in someways, the overall outline of this situation is the same for everyone so involved, the practical working out of that intention is something that must take into account the details of each individual-persons inner and outer situation, and so deal also the variations on the common theme of  healing sick culture inwardly and outwardly together.

For example, how do I as a Myers-Briggs INTJ, as an enneagram 5, (I could add many other ways of tentatively understanding and talking about my subjective situation) successfully challenge my tendency to withdrawal and, judge, and conceal, (all in inappropriate and unhealthy ways), how do I challenge this IN SUCH A WAY THAT the outer world is also maximally moved toward Healthy Culture? My whole life (at least the deliberate intentional part) is my reply, my experiment, regarding that question. This group (and this post) itself is part of that experiment for me.  For by starting this online Healthy Culture group I hope that I am making a gesture toward moving out of enneagram 5-like secrecy, and seclusion in a way that will hopefully lead me towards a somewhat more 8-like role in the world generally, which (if my assessment of my own personality and integrative path has not itself been distorted by my own sick culture) seems to be the path of healing for me.

For obvious reasons, having an integrative is not something that is particularly flattering to the competative, one-sided ego any more the growth and maturity of any kind are. The self-righteousness of focusing on ones "piece of the Truth" and rather then ones "piece of the Lie" is certainly more fun at least superficially. And even the self-deprecation of focusing only on ones "piece of the Lie" seems to be preferable (i suppose because it feels more secure) than the more dynamic, paradoxical attitude that having an integrative involves. But such preferences are born only form inexperience; it is just the presence the Lie and the Truth in all of us in ever changing proportions, each one of the two manifesting unexpectedly to different degrees at different times, that make us all essentially equal and (when acknowledged) capable of a kind of real Friendship and real togetherness that would not be possible otherwise.

So all of this is leading up to the question of what you think the details of your own Integrative may be. In the light of what you know and believe about healthy Culture, how do you think you might further your own healing together with my own, the other people in this good And that of the world outside of it? How can we increasingly befriend (listen to, support and challenge) each other, ourselves and the world in such a way that healing will come from it? Can participation in this group even lead to that?

Since, we don’t really even know each other much yet even virtually, I don’t necessarily expect any answers at the moment (although I would appreciate comments and questions). For now I just want to explain this idea of the Integrative as my intention and motivation for starting this tribe and ask if you think you could share in it--if only experimentally.

---I-P)

posted by: piankhy | 05:39 | comments (7)

Saturday, February 02, 2008

The Living Matrix (a Moral Compass)

Part of what a cosmology of Togetherness in a healthy culture does is coordinate and integrate problems and areas of life in such a way as to avoid the typical result of trying to understand issues and solve problems in isolation, which is of course just the creation of other problems in other areas of life not considered when "solving" (and usually only temporarily) the original problem. Cultures all over the world which are or have been relatively more healthy than the dominant culture today have all had some more or less developed variants of the kind of integral categorical understanding I am describing below, though they often differ from it and from each other in important details. What I have worked out and try to share in what follows amounts to an up-dated, individual and personal version of what I suppose to be part the "perennial cosmology" of us human beings, conceived and articulated in a way that is appropriate to the practice of Healthy Culture in our own time.

The Living Matrix is, among other things a set of cognitive coordinates in terms of which Togetherness and Living Wholeness can be understood and so enabled. The Coordinates can be usefully introduced in two parts. First is the 7-fold Static Matrix which takes its nature from the 7 directions of orientation (1-north, 2-east, 3-south, 4-west, 5-up, 6-down, and 7-center) and which constitute the coordination of the Integral (as center) with the Indefinite, Finite, Definite, Transdefinite of the "horizontal plain" (also called the "nexus", and corresponding to "north, south, east, and west"), with the Subjective and the Objective on the "vertical" axis (corresponding to "up and down").

I am mapping these categories of cognitive orientation onto the familiar categories of spatial orientation because, among other things, this serves to show the analogously paradoxical nature of the 7 categories. The existence of the "Indefinite", for example, implies that of the "Finite" and the "Definite" and the "Transdefinite", in the same way that the existence of North implies and involves that of East, South, and West. And just as with a Compass, finding north implies that the compass itself is relatively vertical (and so brings in that dimension and its relative up and down), so the existence of the Indefinite also implies the existence of the "vertical" axis of Subject and Object. As in the case of spatial (we will ignore the idea of "true north" for the moment), the implications here are perfectly mutual and correlative; Indefinite is not absolutely Indefinite any more than north is more than relatively north in practice…

To demonstrate these categories and to illustrate their inherent co-implication I ask the reader to imagine the following:


Imagine (or remember) seeing a friend approach you from a far distance, on the beach say. In the beginning the person is too far away to even be sure that it is a living being, they are a mere point or dot on the horizon that may or may not be moving toward you at all. This is the relatively Indefinite aspect of your experience of them. It is an aspect of experience generally, one from which the intuition of abstraction and its schematic content of mathematics both derive. The Infinite, for example, as a point on the horizon as well as a theoretical and mathematical concept is essentially Indefinite. Counting itself is an inherently indefinite process that abstracts and dissociates the qualitative, existential and other aspects of the thing counted. When we deal with the Indefinite we are generally dealing with the "Itness" of Being.

[It is worth noting parenthetically here that, although it is essentially only one variation on the theme of "General Matrix Dysmutuality" or "General Cognitive Disorientation" (that is, only one way of "getting Lost" cognitively and morally), the dissociation and privileging of "Itness" and abstraction over the other coordinates in our time is a symptom of our sick culture that is involved in our excessively anesthetic "life-styles". Anesthesia (very broadly conceived) often numbs and represses our full experience of self, other and world, in a way that allows for the tyranny of abstraction and the various forms of coercion, callousness, and direct and indirect exploitation, repression fear, and violence that come this. But more on this topic in another post]

Continuing with our beach encounter...as the point in the distance gets closer, we begin to distinguish it from various things; a living thing rather than a piece for wind blown debris, a human being rather than a dog, a woman lets say rather than a man etc…With each distinction we Limit the thing; its becomes less indefinite and less abstract and more Finite and so qualitative. Sooner or later, you recognize that your friend Susan is running towards you very happily in a striking sea-green bathing suit that sets off i-p's skin it such a way that…etc..etc...With all of this we enter the essentially Finite aspect of reality, the qualitative, image and memory based "morphic field" which is part of the substance of the way things are. This Finite aspect of the world one could also describe as the "Thatness" of Being.

Now suppose Susan has reached you now, she has given you a hug, you have sat down together and you are exchanging words; news of how things have been since you last saw each other, of how things are now etc…Already your knowledge and experience of Susan is becoming more Definite (relatively speaking) than before and you are acquiring relatively Definite knowledge of each other. This Definite aspect of reality is more essentially existential and less essentially "aesthetic" than the Finite aspect and certainly much less abstract than the Indefinite aspect of reality with which we began. This relatively Definite aspect of reality one can describe as the "Thisness" of Being.

It is now necessary (for the sake of this explanation) that you and Susan approach (and even transcend) the deepest level of Intimacy, (or relatively Definite knowledge) of each other. I will leave it to you to insert the details regarding how this came about, or how long it took, or even what it means exactly (accept to suggest, for reasons I will explain later) that the example will be more credible if—assuming you are imagining something sexual--that you imagine Tantric or Daoist form of sexuality) and rejoin you again on the beach where you are gazing into Susans eyes, or perhaps even at the back of Susans neck as i-p sleeps, and that at some moment you experience the point at which definite knowledge leads into Transdefinite Mystery; the point at which you know this person so well that you realize you don't know this person at all, and that you yourself, who you presumably know even better, are just as much--and even more--of a mystery, and that Definite Knowledge (which is only relatively definite anyway) itself does not diminish Mystery, or Enigma but ultimately reveals it more clearly. This inherently enigmatic, mystical and Transdefinite aspect of reality can be described as the "Whatness" of the Being.

Now in this entire story both the Objective, outer world, and the inner, Subjective one, have been involved from the beginning and the whole experience not only presupposes them both but also presupposes the essential Integrity ("Togetherness") of them both. For Being is itself this very Togetherness, the Togetherness of subject and object. And while it is true that the subjective memory of someone other than Susan might have, at a certain distance, imposed itself on the person coming toward you, this does not imply some inherent dichotomy of inner image and outer reality, so much as illustrate their paradoxical togetherness in the Living process of Distinction (the Finite Process) within the 12-fold Living (rather than 7-fold static) Matrix itself. But to understand this we must introduce 2 other  aspects of that Living Matrix. We will return to the Beach after we have done so.
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The 7-fold Integral Matrix I have described so far (named for its center) is, as I've implied, only a model of Static wholeness and not the Living Wholeness that actually pertains. A Living Matrix requires that we transcend our static and perfect cognitive "sphere" (and so also our exclusively spatial analogy) and integrate "apart-ness" or the "dis-integral" (or "non-being) as a paradoxically included 8th element in our Matrix. Simultaneously we then also imply a 9th element as the "Living Integral" (as opposed to the 7th "static integral") that reconciles and integrates the Paradoxical Togetherness of Apart-ness (8) and Togetherness (7) because it is itself this Paradoxical and dynamic Togetherness. It is the Living Integral as Becoming that unites--that constitutes--the interplay of Being and Non-being. 

To return now to the beach: It is the dance, Living Integral; the living paradoxical interaction of the integral and the Disintegral (of Togetherness and Apart-ness) that accounts for the possibility of "mistaking" Susan for someone else. In one sense, as I have said, such a "mistake" is only a part of necessary process by which the relatively indefinite becomes the relatively Finite. In another sense, Susan is only "relatively" Susan at anyway, either subjectively or objectively for in the circumstance that you should hold to a "mistaken" identification when "outside"/objective voices say otherwise, there is always both agreement (in this case that someone is there, and perhaps that that someone is "female") as well as disagreement (what the females name and social identity are) in the situation. (By the same token, even subjective/objective agreement--and so "fact"--is not absolute, since you and another will still disagree in many ways—and probably in many ways unknown to yourselves-- about the details of this fact you are agree to as fact; this "Susan" that you agree is "Susan"). It is the constant togetherness of this agreement and disagreement that confirms both the paradoxical mutuality and the validity of the subjective/objective world in itself, (as Being). Yet essential to this static paradox of Being is also the dynamic one that is consists in its integration with Non-being. This is the togetherness/apart-ness of the Living Integral.

But for such a reconciling factor to be a truly dynamic and Living integral, it must be such as leads towards, rather than away from a necessary 10th element of the Living Matrix. For as I have implied, the Living Integral makes the Matrix dance, and so allows our story of the Beach to happen or even be imagined, at all. In a way, the Living Integral Is the Soul of the living Matrix which itself is, Experience, Reality itself, and yet our Life-Logic of paradoxical Togetherness implies something further still. It Implies something Beyond both the Static and the Dancing Integral; beyond Togetherness; and Apart-ness, and the living Dance (the Living Integral) that unites them.This 10th element, which cannot really be named, described, understood, or situated in any particular way vis-à-vis the rest of the Living Matrix, I never-the-less, I call "Freedom" and consider to be in some sense almost the Final Cause of the Living Matrix as a whole as well as both a part of it somehow also beyond it. Becoming is Becoming Freedom.  Nor do I want to qualify this Freedom as either Living or Static or in any other way since it is primarily neither Finite nor Indefinite; neither "Freedom from", nor "Freedom to" nor even "Freedom of". There is nothing much to say about such Freedom. If the Living Integral is the Soul of the Living Matrix, then Freedom is its Spirit.

However, Life-logically this Freedom, what ever it is, also requires (and this took me a while to realize, I guess for subconsciously emotional reasons) its paradoxical complement, and that would presumably also be its opposite. At the moment I can find no other word for this than Slavery. Such Slavery would be as mysterious a thing ultimately as Freedom; I certainly don't mean to limit its meaning to the political, economic, or even to the psychological (though this will necessarily be involved), but some state of affairs justifying such a term does seem to be appropriate when the Becoming that is Life is not "Becoming Freedom"—so that healthy evolution is not happening. In that case "becoming" must mean something like "Becoming Enslaved" or "entrapped" or "Bound" inwardly and outwardly. As with Freedom I do not want do distort things and say that being enslaved means being enslaved by "Matter" or "Sin" or "Maya" or anything else since none of these ideas as yet form a part of Integral Science. It is enough to say that some process of "devolution" seems to be a necessary compliment and possibility corresponding to the "evolution" that leads toward Freedom and that, with such a possibility, the whole "Living Matrix" can also be/become a "Dying Matrix"…

Though Life-logic seems to require the above dualism between Freedom and Slavery, evolution and devolution, and so allow a kind of Moral directionality into the picture, life-logic also (because of its fundamental nature as an affirmation of ultimate Togetherness), requires an affirmation of something that 'transcends", at the same time as including and supporting, this fundamental dichotomy. Rather then just declare my candidate for such a definitive "last Word" for the reader I would like to first share the life-logical "reasoning" that was involved in my choice.

At fist my I chose the word "Spirit" to designate this "final"—even "trans-final" aspect of reality because that world speaks to me of the "unnamable"…. later I thought it might be best to call this "last Word" simply the "the last Word" or "last Thought" (capitalizing "Word" or "Thought" as a reminder that this is just the last or ultimate "cognition" and that I am not saying that there is nothing beyond "cognition" itself). But, following the kind of cognitive algorithm required for life-logical reasoning ultimately lead to hesitation in the choice of either "Spirit" or "the unnamable' or "the last Word" for this 12^th aspect of the Living Matrix.

Then It happened, during the process of rewriting this, that I began to notice how, in the process of the unfolding of theses aspects of the Living Matrix, the terms (from "itness" on through to "slavery") seem to acquire more general and emotionally inclusive connotations. This phenomenon I think speaks to the fact that the Matrix Coordinates are inclusive and holistic by nature and so correspondingly include and involve our emotional and moral as well as our more "intellectual" sensibilities and are therefore something that, even in their more formal and intellectual explication, will not speak to the "inner adult" only but the "inner child" and "inner elder" as well. A more or less at the same time as this  realization, the  appropriate word came to mind, a word which immediately seemed to dissolve the tension of indecision regarding this 12th term, making it all at once obvious that it was the most Life-Logically True (Beautiful, Good, and Inspired) of the terms that I would be capable of coming up with at this time. The word that feels most appropriate for the place that I am intending, the word that affirms and transcends the apartness/togetherness of both Freedom, and Slavery, of both evolution and devolution, of the whole Living/Dying Matrix is (quite obviously)... Love…

By "Love" I mean a kind of Compassionate and All-Inclusive Awareness of the whole Matrix process, whether in its movements toward Slavery or Freedom. In other words; this Love must in some sense compassionately embrace devolution as well as evolution if evolution itself is to continue in a conscious manner and if the devolution is to progressively healed. This is necessary because the complete denial and dissociation of devolution and Slavery would imply a compromise in the Matrix's awareness of (an so integration and wholeness within) itsself. Such a state of affairs would imply the same kind of " "Dysmutuality", "General Cognitive Disorientation" or "getting lost" cognitively and morally" that I mentioned above in relation to the privileging of the "Indefinite" (I should hasten to add however; this is just as much the case when Devolution, and Slavery are embraced to the denial and exclusion of Freedom as the ultimate direction of Life's movement). Thus it must be clear that the Love of which I speak is itself a living and paradoxically inclusive affirmation of a living/dying whole and not some mere static sentimentality directed only to one or other part of that whole…Indeed, because it is truely all-inclusive, the Life-Logical Love of which I speak extends to, includes, and in some sense affirms as part of itself, even the Fear which is its own opposite…

As for Spirit, I do not find I have inner consensus to formally adopt such a term within the description of the Living Matrix...the paradox of naming the unnamable "Spirit" (or even naming the unnamable "the unnamable") is not the problem; life-logic has no problem with such a paradox…It is more a feeling that to either formally include such an idea within (or to formally exclude it from) the unfolding of the Living Matrix would somehow be misleading and obfuscating so far as the actual experience of that reality is concerned… For this, and other reasons I will not go into here, I do not yet (formally) include (or exclude) "Spirit", (which, after all transcends Logic—even Life-Logic) as wholly within the cognitive compass that is the Living Matrix coordinates…

Altogether then, The Living Matrix is described as having Twelve aspects. Expressed in their more abstract form (there are many less abstract correspondences) they are: 1.The Indefinite, ("itness", the abstract), 2.The Finite ("thatness", the qualitative), 3. The Definite ("Thisness", the "existential", 4. The Transdefinite ("Whatness" the "Mystical"), 5. The Subjective ("Insideness" the "Psychological"), 6.The Objective ("Outsideness" the "physical"), 7.The Integral ("Togetherness", Being, Mutuality), 8.The Disintegral ("Apart-ness", Non-Being, "Amutuality"), 9. The Living Integral ("Life", Becoming, "Transmutuality"), 10. Freedom ("Beyondness"; "Paramutuality"), 11. "Slavery" (Bondage; "Dysmutuality"), and 12. Love (Compassionate, All inclusively-Affirming, Awareness; Complete Mutuality)...

The reader will remember my promise to return one last time to Susan and the beach so as to explain my suggestion of some attempt at a healing form of sexuality if sexuality was to be the readers choice of one of the imagined means by which Finite experience of the other (in this case of Susan) was to become integrated into relatively Definite and Transdefinate experience. I did think of trying to do that here, but on second thought, I think that it would be too much for one essay for me to go much more into the topic of healing intimacy and how it relates to the all of this. I have treated the subject of sexuality more fully in another essay; "Sex, Gender, and Healthy Culture"(an essay to which I refer the reader with the proviso that I want to continue to modify or supplement it in the light of new understanding). Suffice to say that such gestures of intimacy (of relatively Definite Knowledge) between and within individuals, to the extent that they partake of and lead to True Life, will involve the Love that is the Compassionate Awareness of both the possibilities of Evolution and Devolution inherent in this kind of "knowing" of self and other. So far as this essay goes however, I hope the you are not disappointed that I choose to leave matters here…after all, the ways in which the cognitive coordinates of the Living Matrix help "choreograph" the Dance of Healthy Culture are both myriad and themselves constantly evolving, with each one meriting more then the kind of cursory treatment that I would have to employ here if I did not want to distract from the main gist of the present essay.

Besides, a big motivation for my writing this is to solicit your conscious and (hopefully more than theoretical) participation with me in such experiments (which I hasten to add need not include the intimate dimension—at least not between the reader and myself!).

So there you have it for now, your introduction to the Living Matrix; It will be seen in other posts (and in practice should you choose to come and participate) the Part the Living Matrix plays in the choreography of the Life-Dance and in the practice of Healthy Culture Generally.

--I-P

posted by: piankhy | 13:52 | comments

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

name change

{I feel the need to post this here (i've already done so on other of my blogs and pages) and on my other motime blog (which I know I have been somewhat neglecting due to a lack of engagement from who ever is actually reading all of this). I am not sure how much more is will post here but want to post this even before I have the time to go back and change whatever I can change in the blog accordance with my decision--I-P}

Name Change

{I wrote this for my blogs and online stuff but I thought I'd put it here to as a way of explaining my name change and sharing a bit about one of the concepts of what I call "healthy culture" with the community---

I-P}

If anybody reads my profile they will know that I am trying to transcend factional Identity politics such as race and gender, religion, among other things. For a long time now I have been dissatisfied both with my birth names and with the ones i have chosen for myself since. If anyone goes to my lifedancelog.motime.com blog and scrolls down to the post entitled “a vision of names” they will read a story in which I asked “Spirit” for a new name and actually received 3. Unfortunately I haven't had inner consensus to use them openly, wanting to make the sharing of such a names a sort of mark of bonding between myself and others who have received names in a similar way.

I still don't have inner consensus (of mind, heart, body, and soul) to share my new names but I do have it, after another “Vision Dance” (the particular kind of ritual at which I received the names alluded to) to replace, where ever I can, the various faction-connoting names I have chosen for myself in the past.

I-P stands for “Individual-Person” and perhaps is more like a title such as “Mr” or “Mrs”, than an actual name. But as such it is a very different kind of title (almost an “anti-title) in that it affirms an identity and an Identity politics that Transcends race, gender, even species, together with any other kind of factional identification of Class or Profession or anything else. It is an identity politics that, among other things, affirms the paradoxical equality and primary togetherness of all Beings.

The “individual” part of individual personhood represents the “vertical”, “self-directed” aspect of the Identity; it relates roughly to ones own experience of ones self in terms of ones own “thinking (mind), Feeling(heart) , sensation( body), and intuition (“soul” in a certain sense) to use a somewhat Jungian vocabulary.

The “Person” part of individual-personhood relates to the “horizontal”, “Other-directed” aspect of Identity in terms of the generic archetypal “social roles” that I affirm to be inherent in anyones Existence at all. These roles (which also constitute four venues of social interaction) are four fold: Family-member (the Familial venue), Neighbor (the neighborly venue), Citizen-of-the-World (the Civil venue) and “Soul” (for lack of a better word, the Religious/Philosophical/Metaphysical venue).

These two identities (the individual and the personal) are related paradoxically in the same way that the vertical and horizontal of spacial orientation (and so the five directions) are related. This means that they are not really two separate identities at all but one five-fold identity. in a same way that horizontal “north, south, east, and west” (the 4 “horizontal” directions) imply and involve “up-and-down” (what I am calling the vertical 5th direction) of spacial orientation, so the “Personal” implies the “Individual” and visa versa, and fulling ones potential as one involves fulfilling it as the other at the same time. Of course having a been initiated by default into the one-sided, paradox and Life-denying logic and sensibility of the present and historical cultures of apartness, we all tend to take for granted and for real and experience of that corresponds to this alienation of inner and outer social existence and so must of us have fallen prey to political implications (basically war in one form or another) that proceed from such false dichotomy and false consciousness.

As an example of this, I want to go a little bit here into one of the effects sick culture has on Identity-politics in our modern version of the culture of apartness. This is that, since the kind of paradoxical togetherness involved in Individual-Personhood is (like paradox in general) hard to even understand in a sick culture let alone live out, what has happened in our politics is that an experience of ourselves that is essentially a paradoxical “both/and” sort of thing vis-a-vis the individual and the “community” (self and other), has been broken apart, dichotomised and so treated as if it were essentially “either/or”.

In our time the Capitalist side of such dichotomization is the ideological mythology about some one-sided and dissociated and atomized conception of “the individual” that is in almost complete denial of the relationships and responsibilities inherent in anyones existing at all (i.e. of what i am calling the four roles/ venues of “personhood”). Even internally (and not coincidentally) the capitalist idea of an “individual” is dissociated, since it involves the priviledging of the “Thinking function” (over feeling, sensing, intuiting) within the the whole of our subjective individual experience. This of course lead to endless alienation, anxiety, lonilness, competition, etc... and ultimate individual and collective suicide.

On the other hand, more traditional, “socialistic” or “communistic” (but equally one-sided) forms of Identity go to the opposite extreme in enslaving the real whole “Individual” to some equally distorted conception of “personal” (social) relationships and responsibilities. These can be anything from Kinship or Gender roles, to the roles of “citizens” (narrowly and nationalistically defined), to various career or employment roles, all of which inevitably demand that the “individual” suppress or distort aspects of their individuality to fit such factional and misconceived and one-sided identity-uniforms. Of course this, via in a way that is only superficially different, also leads to endless alienation, anxiety, loneliness, competition, etc... and ultimate individual and collective suicide.

Anyway, what it means to actually and fully live the paradoxical relatively “themless” identity politics an individual-person within the context of the assumptions of a healthy culture is some thing that I'd have no time to describe here even if I was not still in the process of learning this myself, but I do know and have time to say that “coming-out” as an “individual-person” involves an implicit and explicit renunciation of the kind of false solidarity that comes from the normal “us-and-them” way of bonding (that is of “us” bonding against “them”, whether the “thems” are other creatures, other genders, or other so-called “classes” of any kind. It also involves a conscious acceptance of the implicit responsibility of healthy coming-together, not only outwardly with others (as a responsible “Family-member”, “Neighbor”, “Citizen-of-the-World” and “Soul”) but also inwardly as an authentic Individual.

Of course I'm not likely to ever be permanently cured from “back-sliding” into old, alienated, ways of thinking and feeling, about myself and others since the habits of forty years cannot be expected to change overnight even when there are some new habits to exchange them for (as is the case here). My name change here is just an affirmation and reminder of my intention to go in this direction and of my commitment to it .

Finally, as I said, I currently regard “I-P” as a kind of “title”. If, in the future I do get inner consensus to share the three names I was given. Then I will formally adopt them and be “I-P so-and so”. For now, I will just be “I-P”.

PS,

There is some insight into all of this kind of factional identity politics from the song “uniforms” which is among my myspace blogs. So I quote the text of it here:

Uniforms
By I-P

You wear a uniform of a woman
You wear a uniform of a man
You wear a uniform of an employee
Or a Jew or a Mexican
You wear a uniform of a soldier boy
A uniform of a civilian too
And when you play the game of “me or them”
You wear a uniform of you!

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

You wear a uniform of a bourgeoisie
A uniform of a working class
You wear a uniform of Humanity
When the Martians come at last
You wear a uniform of your politics,
Your race and your religion too,
But if you want peace in the world my friend
This is my advice to you:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

Well I'm talkin' about your identity
I'm talkin bout your foolish pride
And the fear and insecurity
That scares you into takin' sides
'cause everybody is the same and different,
Butt-ugly and beautiful as any star,
And if you take off all of them uniforms
Maybe you'll find out who the hell you are!

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

You wear a uniform of an anarchist
You wear a uniform of a wife
You wear a uniform for every thing you do
And for every part of your life
But there's no uniform for Personhood
Or for authenticity
So if you're uptight and uncomfortable
Take this advice from me:

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

It's us it's us it all of us so please come off of it
It's us is us its all of us; this is “Themless” politics
It's us it's us it's all of us good-and-evil, healthy-and-sick
It's us it's us it's all of us: this is “Themless Politics”!

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

posted by: piankhy | 13:37 | comments

Friday, January 05, 2007

On Christopher Alexander’s “The Nature of Order”

posted by: piankhy | 09:34 | comments

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Medicine, Diet, and Individual-Personal Health

Medicine, Diet, and Individual-Personal Health
Piankhy Thompson

The difference between Individual-Personal Health and the view of health implied in such conceptions as “Health Care”, “Fitness”, “Wellness”, and various other products of mainstream and so-called Alternative medicine, are as extreme as the differences between healthy culture and sick culture generally. In a culture of apart-ness and dissociation, the vary concept of health and of wholeness--and so of “medicine”, must necessarily be distorted and fragmented out of all recognition if it is to have anything but the most tenuous viability within that dominant culture. After all, any conception of health that was at all integrated would have political and economic dimensions that would inherently challenge the status quo of any society in which the alienated Individual, rather than the Individual-Person is understood as the unit.

By saying this I don’t mean to single out capitalist or libertarian views as especially distorting of the concept of health or even as especially pathological manifestations of sick culture. A healthy, Individual-Personal, view of Health would be equally unwelcome in a more “socialist” or a more “traditional” society that downplayed Individualism in favor of one or another (or even all four) of the four other roles, which constitute the nexus of relationship and responsibility that I call “Personhood”. In other words the concept of “familial health”, or “local health” or “civic health” or even “religious or psychological health” would be just as dissociated oxymoronic, pernicious and pathological as that of “Individual health” if they are pursued in reductive isolation and understood from the dissociated point of view of sick culture.

Since, however, the dominant manifestation of sick-culture in this society is more in the capitalist vain of Individual-focused dissociation (of the dissociation of the individual from the whole nexus of that individuals' Personhood), most of the following essay will primarily address the misrepresentations of Health that derive from this. And although I could use the entire field of modern medicine to illustrate my point, in this essay I will use the relatively more progressive branch of “nutrition” as an example of what I mean. The generality of all that follows can be understood to apply “a fortiori” to Modern Medicine as a whole, though I intend to say more about modern medicines inherently hyper-anesthetic dissociated nature in other postings.

In a previous post called “Good Sense and the Meaning of Life” (now in the archives), I introduced the concept (it is also a “percept”) of “Wholesthesia”, or “the Relative Silence of Health”, contrasting it with “Anesthesia”, and explored the implications of these concepts regarding the Meaning of Life. The whole explication eventually culminated in the concept of “Callesthesia”—or “Good Sense” as what we may now understand as the equivalent in the area of general sensibility to what “life-logic” is in the more verbal or intellectual aspects of Individual-Personal culture. As I mentioned in that place, this theory of Life has innumerable applications to the various dissociated and dysintegral fields of study and endeavor within the current sick culture of the modern world. I now want to explore some of these implications it the realm of what is now called nutrition conceived both as a part of medicine and as a part of the current worldview in general.

To reiterate a little more from that essay, I pointed out there, not only the phenomenology of “wholesthesia”, but that of a continuum from Local Wholesthesia, to General Wholesthesia, to Phenomenesthesia (Awakening), to Numenaesthesia (Life) as analogous (though inversely) to the degenerative continuum going from Local to General Anesthesia to Coma to Death. I then posited “Freedom” as a goal or end even beyond this Life and “Good Sense” or “Callesthesia” as the dynamic sensibility and process leading to that end most efficaciously.

It’s easy enough, considering this progression, to conceive of a linear classification of Substances in terms of their effects on a (human) Individual-Persons metabolism as ordered along such a continuum. In other words, we can posit a continuum of substances from the more anesthetic (such as cloroform, cocaine, alcohol,many "medicines"), to the more wholesthetic substances (such as fresh air, spring water, wild raw foods).

I would put exceptional quality fresh organic cooked food somewhere near the middle of the continuum (though still on the anesthetic side), shifting toward the more anesthetic or more wholesthetic depending on details of preparation and consumption. (I hope the reader will be patient with this exposition and not reduce and dismiss this essay as raw food propaganda. The point I am getting to is much more subtle and sophisticated than that, as I hope to show.)

Now if we were to adopt a static view of the this reality, and also ignore both “Freedom” and “Good Sense” in considering the relavent analogy, then either the perfection of perfectly wholesthetic foods would be demanded (and the absence of this lamented) or a kind of “happy medium” would be invoked in which the “balanced approach” of very good quality, mostly raw, food would seem to be implied. But am not implying or recommending either of these things. What properly follows, as a recommendation, from what I have related so far, is an Individual and Personal Callesthetic diet that may or may not surpass or even closely approach the medium of good quality food, (cooked or raw), depending on the situation of the individual person involved. In other words, a Callesthetic diet is the best possible under the inner and outer circumstances and it can very extremely depending on those circumstances, which consist not only of the other aspects of the persons Individuality (mind, heart, intuition--and not just body), but the whole horizontal nexus of their Personhood as a family member, citizen of the world, neighbor and “soul”. A healthy (Callesthetic) diet then is the best one possible consistent with continuous progress in Living as in Individual-Person, rather that as a “surviving” as a dissociated Individual.

Moreover, the reason for eating as raw and as locally as is reasonably possible is not, from a Callesthetic point of view, to prolong ones life, but to remain in touch with Life; to remain aware and in balance with the other killing eating and dying beings with whom one shares ones neighborhood, ones familial venue, ones world. Such eating derives from a desire to be maximally aware, inwardly and outwardly, and to numb ones self as little as is possible or necessary. At the same time, to one-sidedly strive for perfect nutrition, even for this reason, would not be Callesthetic in most cases since it would involve a kind of fanaticism which would throw the rest of ones life out of balance.

If for example, in order afford the best and freshest food, I have to take (or keep) a meaningless, stressful, and destructive job, then I am liable to be undoing my balance as a whole individual-person even as I try to seek prefect health in that one aspect of individuality. And even that physical aspect of my wholeness is not likely to really improve in that case, because the increasing stress of my money making is likely to cancel out whatever good effects my diet adds anyway—even if I can keep it up.

On the other hand, If when have the money and/or time to spare (all other aspects of my life being suitably accounted for), or if that kind of food is readily available to me for some other reason, than it would be just as unbalanced not to increase the quality and quantity of organic or wild local food. It would also make sense as a kind of emergency detox from a previous horrendously anesthetic and processed diet, if the multidimensional causes of my adopting that numbing diet in the first place are also being dealt with to at least some extent.

The point is that the proper diet for an Individual-Person integrates, in a life-logical way, both the linear gradient (or hierarchy) involved in affirming standards of quality at the same time as it also embraces a kind of context-dependant relativity, in such a way that the dissociated and abstract ideal of perfectly “wholesthetic diet” is subordinated to the integrated Ideal of the Callesthetic (sensible-for-the-time-being-and-under-the-circumstances) diet of an Individual and Personal being that is more than a body and that therefore “does not live by bread alone” (even when its “Essene bread”).

But just in case you misunderstand, and what I have said so far seems to you to council obliviousness to ones diet, I want to reiterate that such a thing would be extremely inappropriate under most circumstances. The important use of the anesthetic-to-wholesthetic scale that I began by describing is to aid in monitoring (listening to) the extent to which one is using food or drugs to numb (anesthetize) oneself and so to maintain a state of apart-ness from the feedback of ones own body and heart inwardly, as well as outwardly, from the inherent claims and challenges of ones relationships with other beings. What one is listening for however, rather than being perfection, is sufficiency under the circumstances. For though a more anesthetic-than-necessary diet would mean a need to alter ones whole life-pattern in such a way as to naturally return to that way of eating which is consistent with the coordinated progress of ones whole life-dance as an individual-person, so might a “less-anesthetic-than-appropriate diet, which could be a symptom, as well se below, of imbalances that are just as unhealthy.

For if paradoxical subtleties pertain even when the understanding behind the motivation to eat well is itself a healthy one, they pertain even more when what is behind that motivation is really only a vain consideration of appearance, of what is called “fitness” or of self-rightiousness. Then the truly healing aspect of such eating is already negated, or rather such eating is not “eating well” at all, no matter what the quality of the food. When my concern with nutrition and with my body is really only part of my denial of what my soul knows about the reality of my ultimate end and identity, or when it’s a part of some childish or desperate conceit of my ego as to my specialness or "healthier-than-thou" self-importance, than the end result of my efforts is only going to contribute to my sickness as an Individual-Person since, in such a case I would be “feeding” my body at the expense of my mind, heart and intuition and so losing real contact with the whole of myself, however it may seem to those less discerning.

Though the above discussion is still too abstract (since a real individual-personal situation has by no means been taken up and explored in all its endless and endlessly changing specificity), I nevertheless think it helps to make the point is that Individual-Personal health means dynamic balanced awareness of, and responsiveness to, all of the changing aspects of inner as well as outer life which proceeds in a way that neither discounts nor rigidly dissociates and privileges, any one dimension or aspect (in this case nutritional health) over any of the others (since this would actually stifle progress toward a more whole and balanced life). A more concrete and example-filled sense of all this can be gleaned from a reading of the partner blog to this one: Lifedancelog.motime.com.

All of these considerations can be seen to bring into question the very idea of nutrition conceived only in one-dimensional material terms, and similar considerations could just as easily be used with regard to every other specialized preoccupation of those who conceive of health in a dissociated (and so itself unhealthy) manner. And this is true whether this happens within “medicine” or outside of it. Indeed the existence of “medicine” itself as a dissociated and circumscribed study and practice applying only to human beings is already as sign of sick culture. This is still more the case when those human beings are themselves conceived of only as “individuals”, even “psycho-physical” ones.

Though, from the point of view of the identity-politics of Individual-Personhood, one might (in a qualified way for a specific purpose) speak of “Individual health” as the degree of (relatively “vertical”) integration of the individual as mind, heart, body, and intuition and then of the kind of material nutrition that can contribute to this, it can be immediately seen that this vertical, individual axis could not even exist (either as healthy or sick) without the horizontal nexus of Personhood (as familial, local, civil, and “psycho-religious” relationship) as part of its inherent context. Speaking of the mind as the “inner-adult”, the heart as the “inner-child”, the body as the “inner-animal” and the intuition/soul as the “inner elder” helps to make it even more clear that all of these so-called subjective “psychological categories” have their equally “sociological/external” counter-parts as venues of participation and "nourishment". Nevertheless, such a differentiated way of looking at and talking about Individual-Personal health allows a kind of integral analysis in which seemly divergent areas of imbalance or distress can be placed in their proper relationship to each other and to the dynamics of the whole Individual-Persons Life.

In such a light, symptoms of “poor nutrition” and of physical illness generally can actually be seen, as valuable signs of general imbalance. Even more paradoxically, they can also be seen as, under specific circumstances, possibly useful checks against the kind of psychological (ego) inflation that derives from overly dissociated conceptions of “individual health”, such as vanity, self-rightiousness etc, that are almost always based on the competitively factional and specialized identity-politics of gender, race, class, species etc. Seen in such a light “Physical Sickness”, pain, and even death can, when rightly understood and experienced, be a chance to realize and acknowledge intrinsic non-factional Relationships and Ultimate Identity, both for the “individual” who is “ill” and for those who witness this. At any rate it is only with such a realization and acknowledgement of inherent relationship and identity that real healing can even begin. From this point of view, the so-called physically, and psychologically healthy are probably more likely to be farther from such a realization then those have been forced by “bad luck”, into closer proximity to the Living Truth of who and what they ultimately are.

Such Living Truth cannot really be totally verbalized, but it includes the realization that, inwardly and outwardly, we share both the world and our very Identity with “individual-persons” of every kind, from “atoms” and bacteria to planets,stars and the old person next door. Sickness and death, from such a point of view, are just challenges for us to realize this paradoxically shared identity and our intrinsic subjective/objective interparticipation (our dance) as only relatively distinct expressions of Individual-Personhood  with (and “as”) every other; a dance that gestures toward a Freedom that transcends identity itself. Such Living Truth includes the realization that real Individual-Personal Health is both the progressive and the actual expression of this dynamic and living process of subjective and objective integration. This realization/expression of wholeness as healing is not one of “health” as a static, private possession that can be broken up or horded along the lines of any other commodity, but an inclusively abstract, qualitative, existential, mystical, subjective and objective event in which Being Itself is strengthened, and in which Individual-Personhood, as a Living Field of Belonging, opens like a flower and receives, with welcome, with thanks, and with Good Sense, the Selfnature-quickening pollination of Spirit.

posted by: piankhy | 12:10 | comments

Monday, March 27, 2006

Sex, Gender and Healthy Culture

Sex, Gender, and Healthy Culture
Piankhy, March 27, 2006



Healthy Culture is about, among other things, transcending factional identity politics through affirming our primary identity as Individual-Persons. It is about assumptions of Togetherness and it is about Rituals of Togetherness that transcend and heal inner and outer faction and inner and outer competition. It is about inner consensus and outer consensus as Individual Persons and about the Living Friendship that engenders this.

Sex as a ritual, to the extent ( which is considerable) that it is informed by the culture of Apart-ness is, necessarily, about none of this. Such sex functions as a ritual of Apart-ness, of both inner and outer Alienation and exploitation. It is so outwardly, among other things, because it is so tied up with factional identities of gender and of dissociated individuality. This leads to generally competitive ("me or us" against"Them") assumptions with the typically lose-lose results of all competition. It is so inwardly because the very act itself usually involves a separation and Dysmutuality of mind, heart, body, and intuition as a matter of course. In short, the dissociated practice of "sexuality" in our culture  is  a necessary aspect  of  a  distorted conception of  what  it  is,  which in turn is a natural consequence of a dissociated conception and experience of what we are.

Since the culture of Apart-ness is given to ordering things, (once they have been suitably dissociated from there context) in terms of false dichotomies, the whole subject of sexuality, without really even being well defined, is divided simplistically along the lines of religions position and humanistic sciences position. Perhaps in some other essay I will go into detail about how both positions (and all the gradations between them) are essentially similar in that they are all informed by alienated assumptions about nature and the body, and so are equally manifestations of the culture of Apart-ness. What I want to do in this essay is to explain the conception and practice of “sexuality” from the point of view of Healthy Culture and of assumptions of Togetherness.

It is really impossible to fully separate the “vertical” or Individual aspects of what we call “sex” from the “horizontal” or Personal/social aspects of it. If Intuition, Mind, Heart, and Body are all alive, and nourished in the sex ritual than it can be certain that those engaged have transcended the roles and factional identity politics of Gender or of anything else, and are engaged in a dance of mutual healing and living friendship, and visa versa. In the culture of sexuality however, such a thing presupposes an inward attitude of friendship toward the body on the part of all involved.

The body is the part of nature that we are most concretely. And the sexual energy that is expressed through the body is not, anymore than nature is, something to be exploited for the pleasure of a dissociated ego. As Taoists, Tantrics, and other have long known, the purpose of sexual energy is to create Life. That Life can be in the form of another being or it can be in the form of greater Life and wholeness within and between the individuals who are generating it. To put it in more modern terms, sexual energy is the energy of evolution. We can evolve as a species via reproduction and/or we can use that same energy to evolve as Individuals.

In a culture of apart-ness of course, the wilderness of the body, like the outer wilderness, is desecrated and exploited as soon as this becomes possible, in the