{Note: this essay was originally meant to be presented to my intentional community as a paper on our Ideas and Opinions board. It grew too long for that (3 pages is about the most people seem to be willing to read in that context) and so I have decided to post it here as hopefully helping to explain some part of the theory of Healthy Culture. I still want to post it to my community but am somewhat at a loss as to how to edit it enough and still not lose any of the important ideas or clarifying examples. Anyone feeling up for such an editing challenge, feel free to have a go at it and email me their results. I'd be grateful for the help--I-P }

Efficiency, Externalization, and Mal-employment          A"healthy culture" editorial By I-P.

 

 

[Argument/Summary: The concept of efficiency as it is normally understood imposes, in the area of "employment" and "labor", a psychologically, morally,(and ultimately, even economically) unhealthy practice of dissociated specialization that involves a kind of "externalization of costs and damages" to the wholeness of the  human being. This externalization of mal-employment is the equivalent in Labor to the "externalization" of  costs, and damages to the wholeness of aesthetic, social, and ecological environment that is typical of industrial mal-production and in competitive capitalist culture generally. We should acknowledge that our participation in the culture of such one-dimensional "efficiency" is,  like our participation in capitalist culture generally, a necessary evil to be minimized rather than a positive value to be pursued and, in our choice of businesses and our approach to work in general, should be consciously trying to move in the opposite direction. Ultimately the work of being whole and good people is not something we can afford to"moonlight" at, but must be understood to be our main work; our main reason for being here. It's "efficiency" at that work--what I am calling Integrative Efficiency-- that should be the priority.]    

 

Part One: Pseudo-Efficiency

 

If efficiency means anything it would seem to mean not working against ourselves. If this is so then there must certainly be some consideration of what "ourselves" means in order to judge of efficiency. What I mean by "ourselves" is "our whole selves".

 

 

But I guess even this is controversial; Most people habitually fragment themselves when doing something, that is, they sort of take off their, "whole person in the world" "hat", and put on their "I am a "tofu packer" (hammock weaver, "this-or-that-manager" etc) "hat", and proceed to understand efficiency in mostly quantitative terms relevant to those specialized tasks and specialized conceptions of themselves.

 

 

This process of identity dissociation, of invoking a specialized identity to exclude certain parts of ourselves from awareness and consideration in our work, is really the equivalent (in the "employment" or "labor" aspect of a sick economy) to the concept of "externalization", in the "production" aspect of such an economy. In other words, just as the destruction and neglect of certain aspects of our whole ecological and aesthetic environment can be "externalized" in our assessment of the cost and value of economic "production", so the harm to and diminishment of, large aspects of our own lives and experience can be successfully "externalized" (ignored) for the sake of some insanely circumscribed conception of a "bottom line" in the form of "efficiency" as "professionals".

 

 

Yet, unless it really is possible to stop being a "whole person in the world", (with a living body, heart, mind, and conscience that resists reduction to a one-dimensional constraints and criteria), the attempt at dissociated, specialized efficiency is going to be in conflict with our actual experience and functioning as a whole persons, that is to say; efficiency will begin to mean "working against ourselves" (see footnote)

 

But of course the truth is that, (both in the case of the whole --real--environment and of the whole--real--person), this kind of "externalizing" efficiency does not reflect reality. Thus it is not sustainable. Nor is it responsible. Nor is it even intelligent even in its own one-dimensional terms; it is not real efficiency in any useful sense at all.

 

 

Since being "a whole person in the world with a conscience etc" is of course, actually not a "hat" that one can temporarily replace at all; my heart, my whole mind, my whole body, my aesthetic, ethical and other sensibilities, and my role and responsibilities in the larger world don't just disappear because I decide to they are not germane to what I am "doing". In real life, as in ecology, it is impossible to only be "doing" one thing, and the externalization and suppression, (when I am being an "efficient worker" or a "good Manager" or a "Professional" in the usual isolated sense) of any and everything else I am doing to the whole self-and-world that actually exists beyond my artificial boundaries), is expensive.

 

It is morally expensive in that it constitutes practicing a mundane version of the kind of "double mind" thinking that, for example, Robert Jay Lifton describes in his book, "The Nazi Doctors"(this might seem an over-the-top comparison, especially if one believes, unlike myself, in what amounts to "immoralities of scale", but bear with me). Those doctors did, precisely the identity "hat trick" that I described earlier; that is, they employed the ethically myopic conception of the "specialized efficiency" of a "specialized identity" embodied in the idea of doing their "job" well as "officers", and so deluded themselves into thinking that bracketing ones humanity (supposedly temporarily) is significantly different from just being inhuman; that the distinction between "pawning ones soul" and selling it outright is even worth quibbling about. (especially considering the nature of the "pawn broker").

 

I have given an outsized example as I said, but my point is not only that what those people did is an extreme example of the cop out that, in smaller ways, we all make when we split our understanding, identification, experience, and assessment of ourselves in this way, but that their ultimate "performance" during war time was the cumulative result of the many "rehearsals", they went through in the course of their previous lives of being "efficient workers" in the same, or some other sick system. One could say that every previous experience those doctors had in  the kind of work that obliges and rewards such double-mind thinking (in the name of efficiency, "survival", or anything else for that matter) was actually a kind of small rehearsal for and practice in, the great self betrayal, that they eventually made. Our own "work scene" can also become more like those kinds of rehearsal/training grounds if, in the name of "efficiency" or anything else , we continue to give more attention to necessary evils than positive values.

 

I understand that "efficiency" in the narrow sense, if one is good at it, can be "fun"; that many people enjoy pretending that they are only doing one thing, that they have no existence or responcibilities beyond the present narrowly circumscribed and defined task, the performance of which is to be assessed only in terms of speed or some other purely external measurement. But I suspect that this kind of fun only feeds (and so can only be "fun" for) a certain part of ourselves (probably the same part that is capable a being hypnotized by video games or other ethically myopic distractions) while being completely frustrating (and some times even harmful to) other parts of our wholeness as persons.  I have also noticed that such an approach to work--especially when approach is accompanied with great gravitas--is often being used as a kind of ethical displacement (or as I've said "ethical myopia"), so that the energy that should be going to the work of inner and outer healing as a whole adult person is being displaced and re-channeled into an obsession with a certain level of finish in some task that, taken in and of itself, not only has nothing to do with what really needs to happen (either in the world or in oneself), but is actually destructive and at best a necessary evil. It is as though the constant existential conscientiousness and courage required to actually be a good person in an essentially sick and eroding society has pretty much led to that imperative being abandoned altogether and replaced with the ideal of being a good "worker", "manager" or even a "good communard" (to the extent that that title is used as an escape or distraction in this same sort of way).

 

Most of the preceeding was in regard to the "moral" or ethical expensiveness of a one-dimensional conception of "efficiency". But specialized conceptions of efficiency are also expensive (and so really inefficient and unintelligent) because the maintenance of the kind of  " inner externalization" that this approach to working requires on a regular basis, is expensive. It has to be maintained by things like the regular consumption of anesthesia in the form of legal and illegal drugs, visits to the chiropractor and hospital, treatments for carpal tunnel syndrome, treatments for emotional stress related to work anxieties as well as general psychological anxieties relating to the stress of having to ignore or repress the claims of conscience and of ones "inner adult", etc etc...And this is only to mention things that (because they cost time and money) would be considered "internalities" even in a business sense, especially for people who share such expenses.

 

Many of these forms of anesthetically motivated mal-consumption, besides being economically expensive themselves, are doubly destructive because, like most forms of anesthesia, they become addictive just because of their temporary effectiveness in facilitating denial by driving below the surface, the very pain (the pain of the meaninglessness involved in working against, rather then toward, ones whole self) that is pointing to a need to change the system. By this time the work itself (which can also be a distraction itself in is own way) is usually well integrated into a general, and often very "comfortable" lifestyle-routine of benumbed distraction, addiction and denial.

 

Given all of this, from the point of view of the more holistic conception of efficiency that I will outline below, reluctance or "inefficiency" (in the usual sense of the word) in such work  is often just reluctance to externalize in this way; to pawn ones soul; to "work against oneself", against ones conscience, against wholeness, against the future, against our body/minds and their natural rhythms, against Freedom. It is a sign of the successful (or unsuccessful) struggle of our more whole and real selves against our fragmented and fear-based self-image. Ultimately such "inefficiency" is the conscious or unconscious revolt of some part of our better selves against meaningless slavery and the lie of the carrot of future freedom and lasting approval (or at least higher rank as a slave) that leads us into that slavery in the first place.

 

This being the case, rather than calling this more whole, most essential and less enslaved part of ourselves a bunch of names and brainstorming how we can finally defeat it and become the more "efficient" (and so less human, healthy, and good), we could actually decide to acknowledge that the whole economic system we are more or less forced to participate in sucks; Of course it sucks because of its externalization of costs and damage to our physical and aesthetic environment, but also because of its equal tendency to encourage a mind set the does the the same thing to costs and damage to our own wholeness as individual-persons (I also sucks  for many other reasons not mentioned here). What follows from this seems to me to be some ongoing attempt to re-conceive of efficiency as "minimally working against our whole selves", (or much better, as maximally working towards inner and outer wholeness) and to redesign the way we work so as to affirm such a value and make the work maximally meaningful and nourishing to our whole selves and the world.(And, where this maximum is still too meaningless and toxic, progressively phasing out that kind of work and replacing it entirely.)

 

I am pointing out all of this right now mostly I guess to influence, not only the criteria behind the choice of whatever new businesses we choose to take on (as well as how we choose to conduct them when we do decide that), but also to encourage reflection about the kind of work we are already doing and the way we are currently doing it. If we could be more conscious of the various ways we put our souls, bodies, hearts, minds, "in pawn" during whatever work we do, we can begin to try to creatively minimize the extent to which this is necessary and, once getting the hang of this, begin to make institutional changes that further facilitate it.

 

Without naming this tendency to "inner externalization" in the kind of work we do (and, just as important, in the way we do it) as the destructive force it is and without resolving to work (as much as is possible) toward progressively making the work we do work for rather than against our whole selves (and our whole outer world as well), entropy will continue (as it tends to do in the void of conscious and conscientious intention, insight, and intervention) to lead us further and further down the denial and rationalization-filled road of (increasingly "efficient") self betrayal.

 

 

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I don't want you to get the impression that I think the way we currently seem to work has yet completely succumbed to the, (essentially corporate) conception of efficiency that I have been debunking. At least people still seem to try to make most work "pleasant" rather then simply get it done as fast as possible. The problem though, (and this point would require at least another paper to treat decently) is that this situation is not sustainable for the reason that working For rather than Against ones whole self, is more than just making work "pleasant" in the normal sense. It is in fact something most people have never (or almost never) experienced consciously because they have never fully experienced or attended to their whole selves at all.

 

Certainly the educational system and most peoples upbringing (in which they are intimidated into trading their wholeness as individuals for "acceptance" as a "good boy" or "good girl" by the generally impatient and ignorant giants on whom they absolutely depend) is just as much of a training in great and little self-betrayals as subsequent work life usually is. Thus having no really reliable conception, experience, of what real inner and outer freedom (the freedom express and increasingly and responsibly to discover and evolve into our real whole authentic selves) even is, we settle for a relatively pleasant form of slavery, the best case scenario of which being the scenario of being our own "masters" (which of course means being our own slaves). But becoming aware of and working towards actualizing, affirming,"internalizing", ones wholeness as a person is not (any more than affirming and "internalizing" the wholeness of the ecosystem is) a matter of "mastery" of one but of true awareness and true Friendship with, of all of ourselves, all of each other, and all of our shared world.

 

It might be a stretch to call work in this direction "working toward efficiency" but, given that such work is, in the light to our inevitable death the only work that ultimately has real meaning, I have no problem calling any arrangement  that actively or passively discourages us from making it a priority in our lives, not only highly "inefficient" but ultimately insane.

 

 

{footnote: In the context of the sort of Newspeak the reigns in the sick culture of corporate capitalism (in which what is called "the Free Market" is really a "slave market" in so far as its actual impact on most people goes), the fact that efficiency in real terms is almost the opposite of what it is in market terms is not surprising}

 

--I-P

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Part Two: Integrative Efficiency

 

It seems a bit lame to end this essay with only a weak gesture toward a positive conception of efficiency and without trying to give some examples of what it might look like to work toward it, even  under the constraints of the current eroding economic environment. I think that in the first place doing such a thing involves a clear conceptual distinction  between what I call the "work of Living" and the "work of surviving". I think making such a distinction will prepare the way for practical attempts at the integration of the two.

 

By the work of Living I mean the work of "coming-together inwardly and outwardly" as a whole individual person. By coming-together inwardly I mean working toward living in a way that brings together and nourishes equally, ones mind, heart, body, and intuition--the "cardinal points" of ones whole self as an Individual subject--and that minimally involves any kind of externalization, repression, sedation, and/or censorship of any of those four aspects of oneself. Coming-together outwardly is inseparable from this as it means working toward healthy authentic engagement with others in the very social venues of Life that correspond to the four just-mentioned aspects of the individual. Thus the "civil" venue--the venue of "strangers" whom we want to engage and befriend as fellow-citizens of the world, is--or should be--the primary social venue of concern for the "mind". Healthy engagement in the Local venue, or neighborhood nourishes the Heart or "inner child" in us ("it takes a village to raise  a child"), and so on as the table below suggests:

 

 

Its not the point here to try to fully explain or justify these correspondences and they certainly doing represent rigid categories. I bring them up only to help explain the following: that the work of Living means trying to make sure that whatever one is doing maximally nourishes the whole Individual: that it nourishes the inner adult us by having some kind of relevance to healthy coming together--to healthy culture--in the civil venue of a citizen-of-the-world. That at the same time the work is be somehow also made to nourish and heal the Heart because, perhaps because it is done in such a way as it can be sensed to be a ornament and a help to the Neighborhood {note; there is much that can be said of the harmful narrowing the "provence of the heart" to the familial venue that happen in a nuclear family-style of dissociated culture, but I will forbear here}; that, not only should that any given activity must also and equally feed and nourish the body and so benefit directly or indirectly the culture of the household or Familial venue. Finally, the work of living means the work of including, attending to, and satisfying  the Intuition, so that the activity makes sense in terms of "ultimate things" (as a challenge to the separative ego perhaps) and as a healthy "soulful" gesture to others. As is usually the case, the distinction expressed here are only relative distinctions, describing the essential "cardinal points of Individuality and Personhood, there is of course in reality a complete gradiated continuum involved.

 

So working towards making every action an affirmation of  togetherness in ways such as I have described is, when it it done consciously and in the context of a life committed to pursuing inner/outer healing, what I mean by the work of Living--which I could also call the work of Individual-Personhood or the work of Healthy Culture. The "work of Surviving', just means the work of pragmatically coping in with the cultural erosion of the dominant culture so as to be able to continue trying to progress in the work of Living. Of course, in a healthy dynamic it is the intrinsic joy and meaning of the work of Living that motivates the work of "surviving" and ultimately--in a certain sense--even replaces it altogether. On the other hand, the work of surviving without the work of Living, is really just a kind meaningless slavery and double alienation; mutual alienation inwardly, between the aformentioned aspects of ones whole self as an individual (and this invariably involves the inner repression and externalisation above alluded to) as well as alienation and phoniness between oneself and others in the 4 outer, social venues of Personhood.

 

Now the work of Living, of pursuing healthy coming-together inwardly and outwardly as I have described, certainly seems like a tall order given the state of both ourselves and of the dominant culture, but what I want to show now is that, with the proper Life-Logical understanding and integrative Intention and Imagination, it is suprisingly easy to make, within the necessary constraints of any given situation, even the most mundane chore of "survival" into as much of a "work of Living" as it can be.

 

{note: The example of this that I use here is what, at Twinoaks, the intentional community where I live, is jokingly called "Serfing" (as in being a "Serf"). Everywhere else it is called "house-keeping" or doing ones chores} 

 

So the question then when it comes right down to it is; how can something like weaving a hammock chair, like Serfing, like washing dishes or mopping the floor, be done in such a way as to nourish my mind, heart, body, and Intuition in the way described above.

 

Well it helps here to remember that Healthy Culture consists of Cosmology, Identity, Ritual, and Infrastructure, and that even washing a dish can be understood as a ritual of togetherness or a ritual of apartness. Just approaching the act from this point of view, and trying to make of it more a ritual of togetherness is already something that is nourishing to my inner adult since it makes the action a kind of experiment in healthy culture that I can share (as I am doing now) with others as an example that can be transposed in its essentials to any other action. Such an experimental ritual naturally involves washing the dish as much as possible, like a whole "individual-person" rather than like a "Dishwasher" or a "Serf". For me this aspect of the experiment starts even before the I reach the kitchen since, for me Serfing is much more like "Surfing",in the sense of surfing on the tides of my energy level and only choosing to wash the dishes when I have "inner consensus" of mind, heart, body, and intuition to do so. Also, because of my ongoing studies of body movement practices like David Gormans, "Learning Methods" and the "Alexander Technique" (both of which uphold an ideal boyant effortless action, so that conciousness of effort is regarded as a sign of working againts oneself in some way), the act of washing a dish can become for me a kind of meditation and an opportunity for listening to the messages of my body and heart; am I holding the dish more tightly than necessary?, am I supported, light, effortless, and balanced on my two feet or am I unconsciously leaning against the sink in some effortful and anxious way? Why am I unconsciously coercing and stressing myself in this way? Are my heart and intuition, through my body, trying to tell me something by these unconscious gestures? etc..). On the one hand whatever awkwardness or imbalances I find will be the welcome substance of further learning. On the other hand, these being temporarily absent, my body is nourished and my heart is charmed by my own elegant and effortless action. My heart is also free to enjoy the way the light reflects on the dishes though the window, the sensuous beauty of water, to creatively ornament the experience with song etc, since feeding it with the activity will usually mean slowing it down enough for such things. All of this time Intuition will perhaps be nourished by the inner struggle against "image-consciousness", ego, and fear of vulnerability involved in my trying to make this action a ritual of healthy culture at all. For example, the growth involved in dealing with such thoughts as "what will happen if others see me pursuing holistic rather than corporate efficiency by working more slowly than I otherwise might?" "how is my ego doing being deprived of the security of the normal misguided approval of the ethical myopia of  "end-gaining" and conforming to default notions of efficienc?" help integrate the soul and its concerns into the act and make the action meaningful from that perspective.

 

There are many other ways to pack meaning, and so life, in to such simple actions that I have necessarily left out of the above example. The number or angles for such conscious adaptation is only limited by ones creativity and good faith and the details of the specific situation. What they all have in common is that they stem from the intention to make the action as much of a ritual of healthy culture as circumstances will allow and to make even ones relative failures at this serve as useful lessons for the future. My dish washing situation admittedly has wider margins than many others: a person with a dish washing job at a restaurant would certainly have narrower margins for modifying the same task (if he or she thought the job was tactically worth keeping at all), but it is not so much the width of the margins as the creative determination to take advantage of (and perhaps widen) them to the extent possible that is the point.

 

Ofcourse its not the case that just washing dishes "creatively" (still less creatively doing some more common and more unsustainable and essentially crazy and meaningless corporate task) is likely to be somehow sufficient as a form of cultural activism even though it might end up being (like any other action) ones last act on earth. In themselves such creative adaptations only have meaning as  parts of a whole life devoted to furthering inner and outer healing in the largest as well as the smallest venues. There larger meaning is in there being a of an active and ongoing larger "conspiracy". Thus, the act of taking the dish-washing job at all must itself be justifiable in terms of some larger unfolding plan having to do with ultimately replacing the general sick culture that the work is itself a necessary adaptation to (for example; the person washing dishes in the restaurant might be saving money to travel to some place where they can join others who are interesting in experiments in healthy culture). Otherwise the inner Adult, whose concern in all of us is for a good future for everyone, is not fed, and so the act itself will not be a Living or truly efficient act.

 

The efficiency of working in the way I am trying to describe, is efficiency on the integrative level of inner and outer healing, of meaning and joy and it may be hard at first to see how it can be called "efficiency" at all. To truly appreciate it as efficiency requires a little bit more in the way of understanding the cosmology of healthy culture in relation to time. The concept of time in which what I am describing represents efficiency is not the linear and purely quantitative conception of time embraced by the dominant culture of apartness, but the Integral conception of Time that is an aspect of the Cosmology of Healthy Culture. Such efficiency is a kind of artistry--a dance--in the context of  that Integral Time, a dance in which the concerns of the present, the future and the past and eternity are coordinated and nourished in each action just as the whole Integral Individual-Person is. In fact whenever possible, the considerations represented by these aspects of Time act as the cross-threads through which we sight and choose, among practical possibilities and prospects, the desired place or situation for the dance in the first place as well as being the criteria informing what it is to be and how it is carried out.

 

Such a Dance, when it is really happening is literally happening outside of the dominant culture and can itself function for those who witness it as a door--or at least a window---to a healthy one. As such is both the means and the end of such a culture; a kind of living centripetal eddy, actively slowing a current that is otherwise going centrifugally out of control...

 

The possibility of consciously choosing and cultivating this kind of integrative ("Life-Dance") efficiency over the fear based corporate  ("death march") efficiency of meaningless surviving, is tied up with other fundamental choices; the choice Truthfulness over denial, of Love over Fear, of Togetherness over Apartness, of Healthy Culture over Sick culture in ourselves and in our community. Such a conscious choice (the various choices I named really amount to just that one choice) is of course certain to effect much more than the labor scene here. This paper is just an attempt to explain and show the need for such a choice in relation to that scene and to the ideas of efficiency and "work" in general. Health and Sanity being what they are, equally good arguments for making such a choice can be given in any other aspect of our lives.

 

I often get the impression that people think I am a perfectionist about certain things. I'll make an observation about a certain aspect of the political, socio-cultural  status quo (i don't think its ever about anything that might reasonably be called trivial) and get the impression that I am being some kind of party-pooper; that it is some kind bad manners to actually criticize the status quo dynamics of a group I am actually a part of when every one knows that the way to get along is to always be criticizing Them over There, those other people and their status quo. Often enough, "them over there" really can seem to be in worse shape with respect to whatever I am saying than "we" seem to be (at least superficially), but even when such is the case, this response misses my point completely, and when people respond to a critique of mine in that way I feel extremely frustrated.

If I criticize a situation for not being good, I don't mean "good" in the sense of "Better than some other situation somewhere else", or even "better than the same situation in the past". This is because I am not assuming that the situation I am criticizing is fundamentally separate from other situations or even from what it was in the past. Rather I am assuming that whatever is happening "here and now" is fundamentally "together-with" other situtuations, and thus either a part of a general dynamic of integration,  of healing,of helping that whole,  (including the only relatively separate "there and then"), or a part of a general dynamic that is further dissociating, fragmenting,repressing awareness of this inclusive whole; the wholeness of "Being/Becoming".

But it's simpler to separate space from time ("here and there" from "now and then") for the purposes of explaining this.

  From the temporal point of view, this difference is like the difference between the process of composting or building soil and that of erosion and disintegration of soil.  Soil can be in the process of healing (because the erosion has been stopped by say, putting in erosion bars) and yet still look pretty bad for some time  (considered from a merely static point of view), while, on the other hand, a certain patch of land can still look pretty good (especially when competitively compared to other more damaged land) and still be in for serious erosion in the next big rain. The erosion process still has the fundamental character of being "bad" no matter what stage of the process one is talking about and in the same way, the composting process is equally "good" at t1 or t1000 no matter how different photos of the land taken at those different times would look; each stage of the process is equally good because the process as a whole is good so the competitive comparison between one stage and another of the same kind of process makes no sense.

Thus if I criticize a state of affairs as not being "good" I am referring to which Kind of process it is currently given over to, rather than comparing it to some earlier or latter stage of that same kind of process. It might be perfectionism to expect eroded land to instantly be intact loamy soil in a climax forest but in is not perfectionism to withhold ones approval of the situation until there is some reason to believe that conditions have been changed enough so that the erosion has been stopped and things are moving back in that direction  rather then further and further in the other one.

Moreover, (focusing more on the spacial than the temporal now) the process going on in the soil-building dynamic is, in subtle ways contributing to All the land around it and indirectly making it easier to reverse the erosion in whatever sick soil exists anywhere, since of course that all other land is not fundamentally separate from it at any rate. In the same way, part of something being good "Here" is its contributing to things being good "There", since "here" and "there" are only relative distinctions and not fundamentally separate. Thus "competitive justification", justifying conditions "here" in terms of them being "better" than conditions "there" also makes no sense. 

Of course there are many people for whom the idea of "Good" itself is suspect and in the analogy I have presented they would probably just assume some supposedly amoral and aesthetically neutral scientific, philosophical, or or even allegedly spiritual "view from nowhere" (usually involving reference to immensities of time and space or to allegedly themeless variations between cultures) in which there is nothing to chose between composting or erosion, between good and bad. The idea of "Good" (whether it be good soil or good health or anything else) would be considered by them to be merely "subjective", "qualitative" and therefor somehow...well...not....Good (unless one is a post-modernist, in which case things are reversed but not essentially changed).  Of course in such objections  the now "four-letter" word "Good" would be replaced by a bunch of other, usually longer, words and accompanying circumlocutions that amount to the same thing but are dedicated to the end of preventing such views sounding as silly as they otherwise would).

The present post is not meant to be primarily a response to such people and arguments and I only mention them to suggest that assumptions of primary apartness (this time the primary separation of "the Objective" and "the Subjective"), as well as a corresponding version of competitive justification are also at play here as well. After all, if the subjective and the objective are not fundamentally separate but (like,here and there, and now and then) co-manifest and mutually defining, then judging one of them better than the other (whether or not one is willing to admit to doing this) also makes no sense.

Now, there is much more to all of this and its actually very hard to express all of it well in the language available, so the fact that I am usually being misunderstood in this matter of "Goodness" is not exactly a surprise. I suppose its just  a  part of the sort of cognitive dissonance and "culture shock" that is inevitable between someone consciously committed to the Life-Logical assumptions of primary togetherness and others unconsciously committed to assumptions of primary apartness.  Moreover, since I am actually a member of both of these categories of person, I am sure I complicate and confuse matters considerably sometimes by not being consistent in my conscious understanding, that is, by not being consistently conscious. At the same time, life-logically speaking, I don't suppose I would be very useful if I wasn't really as prone to sick culture as everybody else (even just my putting it in that way might invite this phony, static, competitive thing all over again in some people, but I don't think there is really any sure way to avoid a competative, alienated spin being put on what I am saying since, in a culture of apartness, thats what people do with everything. All I can do is hope that there is and remains in this post --and in all my writings--more encouragement and nourishment for what is Good in both myself and you the reader than for the sick culture in us both).

So, to sum up for now: For someone conscious of primary togetherness, "The Good" (whether in morals, or aesthetics or anything else) is the "Integrative Good"; the Good that Helps the whole to be Good. In other words, entity or situation "A" cannot be justified in terms of being better (whether in a specific respect or generally) than entity or situation "B" (which of course could then try to justify itself by being better than "C", which could... and so on in a way that would reflect only the progressive diminishment and fragmentation of the whole) but is only justified  when it is involved in a process of "helping" B, and not only "B", but equally the whole "alphabet" as it were (including itself). By the same token, "A" is not "bad" (unjustified/unjust) because it is "worse" than "B" in  some specific or even general respect, if in a general sense "A" is involved in such a mutually helping integrative process, whatever stage of such a process it happens to be at.  Thus, cognitive assessments in terms primarily of "Better, Best, Worse and Worst" are totally different from assessments in terms of "Goodness"  and are themselves already "Bad"  (that is already part of a disintegrative process inwardly and outwardly), since they already assume and reinforce the illusion primary separation.

Also, (and this is, I guess, more of an elaboration than a summary), from this dynamic and paradoxical point of view, "A" (or any other "letter") is itself not a static or monolitic entity any more than it is a fundamentally separate one, thus both the Good and the Bad coexist "equipotentially" in every entity and every  specific living situation and manifest only in terms of which is primary in a given actual moment of existance. Another way of saying this is to say that both good and bad are, relatively speaking, creatures of the "Actual" rather than the potential or statistical, in as much as any inner/outer situation can be met with  integrative assumptions of togetherness or with dissociated and competitive assumptions of apartness. This is more or less analogous to the way  an erosion process can potentially can be reversed--and then reversed again--contingent on changes in specific actual circumstances. The process can be reversed because it is not an absolutely "pure" or finished process of erosion (or soil building) at all, but contains within it its own opposite, which can always, in certain circumstances regain the upper hand.  It is exactly like the paradoxical sense in which, although everybody does have "a piece of the Lie" and a "piece of the Truth", in any specific situation one or the other of these is Primary, so that one and the same person can be, in a Truthful moment, consciously acknowledging, engaging and healing their own "piece of the Lie  while in the next moment they can be possessed by that same piece of the Lie, and so repressing and dissociating from  it in a fit of phoniness.


Well that's not the best summary in the world (for example, I am fudging an important distinction between the "integral" and the "integrative" here; the next time I come in the neighborhood of this subject I will be more explicit on this point.), but it will have to do for now. Next time this same general idea will be treated and elaborated on in the context of applying the "Integrative Good" more explicitly and practically  to the idea and ideal of Justice and specifically in terms of what I am calling  "Integrative Justification".

I-P

postscript:

In a previous post I spoke of "Goodness" as one aspect of a four-fold "Virtue" which also includes "Truth", "Beauty", and "Life". My dealing here with this aspect of the Good relatively separately should in no way be taken to reflect some change in that view.  In fact, each of the other 3 aspects of this quintessential "Virtue" (and of course that "Virtue" itself) share the same non-competitive, mutualitistic, paradoxical and integrative quality that I am ascribing to "Goodness" and could not but do so, being not fundamentally separate from it. Its because if this fundamental and paradoxical togetherness of "Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Life, that "Good Sense, Good Taste, Good Will, and Good Faith all go together.

I live in a commune where people often put things "up for grabs" when they're done with them. That's how I came across the book-on-tape version of John Grisham's "Street Lawyer", about an attorney who leaves his career with a big firm to become an advocate for homeless people. I often listen to books on tape when working weaving hammock chairs or something, so I "grabbed it", thinking it might be good for that. This is not a review so I won't say anything about the quality of the book as a whole, but its got me thinking about homelessness and my experiences with it, so I thought I would try to process what it brought up in me.

It strikes me that I can sympathize even a little with the feeling of stigma the idea of "being homeless" conveys in the book, even though it's been almost ten years since I experienced homelessness myself (mostly in different cities on the west coast). This feeling is somewhat worrisome to me since I certainly don't remember feeling more "out of it" in those times then I usually feel these days. Actually I've always kind of felt that I was born "out of it" relatively speaking and I have never really regretted that circumstance.  My homelessness was, if anything, part of my attempt to stay out of it--even to get further out of it if I could--at least until I could figure out what "it" was exactly and what I could do to heal it. Given my, I guess unusually extreme, sensitivity to the insane nature of our collective and individual lives, being homeless seemed to me to be somehow an appropriately extreme response to our general situation. I certainly had a hard time seeing any real " at-home-ness" in the lives of the people whose fate and situation I was supposed to be envying. At the time I believed (and said) that i would rather be in the situation I was in than in that of any of the various "respectable slaves" (whether a high or low ranking slave was immaterial) I saw around me.

I actually pretty much still feel this way, though I am less in denial about the real stresses I was experiencing during that time. Its interesting to me now to compare my situation then to my present one in the light of some of Alifie Kohn's statements in his DVD and book  "Unconditional Parenting". Kohn compares the use of rewards to those of punishments in raising children and finds them similarly destructive in the sense that both teach selfishness and (what I would call) an inherently alienated and dissociated identity. Threatening to beat or actually beating (or otherwise punishing) ones child for, for example kicking his sister has the ultimate effect of encouraging the child to think--not about the fact that the sister does not like to be kicked--but about what will happen to his or her self if they do the kicking (and someone finds out about it). In the very same way, rewarding or promising to reward for a child for not kicking their sister or for being nice to them does not encourage actualconcern for the other person for their own sake but rather for the reward they expect to receive themselves in return for compliance. Of course this confirmed, as Kohn's works usually do, the intuition I have always had about such things, but in this case a further idea, a "blue collar"/"white collar" distinction along the same lines immediately occurred to me as well.

 I remembered how, when I was homeless I spent a good deal of time alone because, among other things, a lot of homeless people are coming out of situations (such as broken homes, jail, or the military) in which a physical punishment oriented lesson of "bully or be bullied" had been transmitted with varying degrees ofsuccess , and the result did not make for a very appealing social environment. Nowadays I live (as I had at the private high school I had attended on scholarship before the "homeless" episodes)  with more folks whose initiation into sick culture involved more upper class homes and more collage education and who therefore  probably have more experience with "white collar version" of alienation in which coercion is usually very indirect, and the "carrot" rather than the "stick" was the moreemphasized version of behavioural control. The main lesson most of them learned I suppose was more was more something like "manipulate or be manipulated". Of course, these are just generalizations, and in both situations there are people trying toavoid both the white collar and blue-collar forms of alienated relating, but the upshot of the fact that in a sick culture there is almost no escape in "society" from some part of this "control continuum" (of which the "stick" of physical violence and the "carrot" of manipulating praise are just the extremes), is that I spend just as much time by myself here as I did when I was on the street, ultimately for the same reason.

Anyway, the little stigma that I feel around the idea of someone "being homeless" bothers me, because it might be sign that, despite my own experience and knowledge, I have contracted some degree of the phoniness, self-delusion and denial of those who think that they are somehow "better off"  than such people. I remember reading an interview--it was either with Carlos Castaneda himself or one of his associates....well I just Googled the interview, which was with Castaneda. He remarked on a time when he was trying to get Don Juan to feel sorry for the plight to the Yaqui Indians , and Don Juan said, "Yes, It's a very sad thing but, you see, your situation is also very sad, and if you believe that you are in better condition than the Yaqui Indians you are mistaken. In general the human condition is in a horrifying state of chaos. No one is better off than another. We are all beings that are going to die and, unless we acknowledge this, there is no remedy for us." I've always seen things pretty much the same way, so the idea that I might have contracted (I guess just by osmosis) some degree of this "I'm so fortunate" denial-pity-and-fear-enabling" sensibility regarding "homelessness" or anything else is pretty disturbing. Almost makes me think about leaving here and becoming a tramp/bum or whatever it is I was again.

I have also been thinking about that in terms of what I think I have learned about myself through my encounter with "the Michael Teachings", which I discovered when I was living an Hawaii years ago. Its a long story, but  I ended up getting a free channeled personality reading (the channel just looks at your photo an blurts out your metaphysical i.d. in terms of  this specific cosmological system that involves reincarnation. I am sure its sounds kind of kooky but the whole thing really makes sense to me to at a certain level, though I can't say I actually hold it as a creed. Anyway, besides being, among other things, an "Idealistic Scholar with a King essence Twin and a Goal of Discernment/Sophistication" (all of which makes sense to me having read theexplanations of these terms), I am also supposed to be an "old soul" (though a relatively "young" old soul, there being seven levels to each soul age). Anyway, it is said that "old souls learn trough terror" and I can certainly remember experiencing a good deal more terror on the streets of various cities than I've experienced (outside of a few vision quests) since I have been here. I'd like to think that I wouldn't hesitate to leave my current situation of relative comfort and security in pursuit of whatever kind of terror is capable of teaching me more of what I might need to know to be a more effective channel for healthy culture, if I could get inner consensus on what that kind of terror would be. Of course if I stay here and continue to grow in healthy culture I can imagine things getting ultimately pretty scary here as well, with the advantage that there the fear would probably be of a different kind than what I've been through before. Still, becoming homeless again is certainly an option and is infinitely preferable to becoming some hippie "corporate-light" version of the "respectable slave" (and there are probably almost as many self-employed slaves as otherwise) that I disdained when I was younger.

I don't disdain such people now, and I am not even interested in pitying them, but I do have a real commitment not to end up, through cowardice, collusion and self-delusion, just becoming a part of the general situation in such a way that I am just helping to make things worse. I would not only risk death but even seek it if that seemed to be my only alternative. I would never commit suicide as either a rejection of the world or of my self, but I would certainly choose death over the fate of betraying myself and the world. I mean, I'm going to die anyway, why not go before that happens. I guess there is some analogy here with the attitude of say, someone in the French Resistance during WWII choosing suicide rather than possible betrayal of their cause under torture if captured. In both cases its a very difficult judgement call, probably more difficult for me since in my case betrayal is more likely to happen quietly and unannounced as a result of seduction by the tranquilizing effect of relative comfort and security, than through any Guantanamo-like experiences. My situation is much more common in that way.

Speaking of "Guantanamo", I was listening to Naomi Klein speak recently about her latest book "Shock Doctrine". She made a comparison between "our" governments response to the fear and confusion  the 9/11 terrorism inspired, and the goals of torture. She quotes a certain torture manual as explaining that the idea behind torture methods is, through pain, fear and disorientation etc, to bring the victim to a state of "regression" in which the torturer is regarded more or less like a father figure (it occurs to me now that the situation revisited is the same one of infant helplessness in comparison to looming parental authority that I referred to in my post about Shame as being the source of our first phony self-image and self betrayal). At the point that this regression is reached, the hard part is over and the torturer can expect to be given whatever information he or she are asking for. I think Klein was saying that the disorientation and fear of insecurity of the 911 terrorism attacks was used by Bush to keep the American people in a similar state of regression, so that they would give the government (as the protecting father) carte blanche to do whatever it wanted in response, including take away many of their own rights.

 I think the analysis was pretty good except that i would have said that the terrorism situation was just an acute version of what has always been a chronic situation between those offering protection and security in exchange for obedience and those accepting the bargain. Ultimately the fear of insecurity and the denial of death and change will always lead to slavery in one form of another, the post 9/11 situation was just on the acute end of a  continuum that has a more mundanely chronic--if more subtle--fear/self-betrayal dynamic at the other end. Is this situation the same kind of "control continuum" I alluded to earlier, a continuum with "Security", "Respectability" and "Prosperity" on the "Carrot" end, and "homelessness, insecurity, and "acute Terror" (as apposed to chronic terror) at the "stick" end of the continuum?

If so, then it would seem that the whole continuum, being just a continuum of the same kind of thing, is presenting more or less a false dichotomy, Micheal Teachings or no Micheal Teachings. Presumably though, it is not the same, and the willingness to experience, acknowledge (and transcend?) terror in pursuit of growth, healing and freedom is not just an extreme version of the suppression of chronic low level "terror" in exchange for the illusion of security and respectability . Obviously it is not. The difference would be that facing terror consciously (even if cautiously) with a sense of meaning and purpose is fundamentally different from living in denial of it, whether the terror one is facing is low level chronic or high level acute.

This last qualification (about it not mattering whether the terror is low-level chronic or high-level acute) seems to me to open up various new possibilities in the pursuit of freedom. If we all live in low level terror of "homelessness", death, or whatever, then we live in low level terror. Which is to say, in a real sense "low level terror" is our "home". Which is to say our home (our whole life situation really) is a prison. Which is to say that, in an equally real sense, (if a true home is not really the same as a prison) we are "homeless" already. Perhaps collectively realizing the pseudo security and pseudo-fortune of our current "fortunate" situations (and the real low-level terror that keeps us in them) is more productive in the long run than rushing out to chase some acute terror, especially if the motive for this latter is really some kind of ego thing (i.e.;"see, I'm notafraid to be homeless so therefor I'm better than you").

What this seems to mean is that I should really be considering myself "homeless" already and considering that I have always been homeless to some extent, at least in relation to various socio-economic situations I have been in. After all, should anyone feel at home--or want to--in any situation which is enabling, or even just not effectively challenging, such an exploitation and slavery-based sick economy and culture? If people can come together in acknowledgment of this chronic low-level terror, of this chronic and chronically denied homelessness and slavery, as a part of the sick culture we all suffer from, then the work, however scary it may still be, of co-creating a sane world for everybody would seem to have begun. Of course the terror of fully acknowledging this everyday fear and misery--and of abandoning the comfort of feeling somehow 'better" or "more fortunate" than anybody else (even though this also implies not being "worse" or less fortunate" than anybody else), is probably a greater terror for the ego then the terror of dealing with actual pain and deprivation and confusion.

But, I don't mean to suggest that this homelessness and fear is our natural condition or even our deepest reality, I am only saying that trying to suppress or deny it--or cover it over with mystical "affirmations" to the contrary--can only lead deeper into inner and outer apartness, denial, and slavery; to getting even farther away from our true Home.

• Mind (inner adult). I feel fairly lucid right now, relatively focused on the task as hand. More generally, my mind is usually investigating, contemplating, and brainstorming all kinds of things relating to healthy culture, which eventually become focused in the coherence of an inspiration usually accompanied by some creative action on my part. Books I am reading include "The Body Movable" by David Goreman, "Law as Culture" by Robert Rosen, "Ending Slavery" by Kevin Bales, and "The Natural Alien", by Neil Everndon. 

  

• Heart (inner child). up until very recently I was feeling very sensitive, I even wept (with gratitude) at the grave yard yesterday on my Death Day Eve, Life-Dance Walk. This morning i was feeling somewhat despondent, as i can sometimes do, about the general state of sick culture in the world (an in myself too). It all seems to have evaporated now and I am feeling pretty cheerful. I have especially be enjoying playing with Ts'ui (that is the name I have given my Guqin (chinese "zither") and also working on a few new guitar songs. 

 

• Body (inner animal). I feel a bit sluggish right at this moment. This time of the year there are not enough greens from the garden, and since even when things are abundant I sometimes find it difficult to eat the 60 or 70% raw that i would like to be eating (100% is easier if you have access to a big enough variety of food). I currently seem to be spiralling into "cookedness". Things should change as we get deeper into spring. On the positive side physically, I am generally feeling more balanced and buoyant as a result of my Alexander Technique experiments and also from studying David Goremans Learning Methods a little. I am also trying to keep up the Chi Gung (Chinese and Toltec) and doing alright with that... 

 

• Intuition (inner elder): I think I might be finally becoming accustomed to the hair-raising nature of my inner and outer adventure. I have actually been warned to expect rather intense cycles given the nature of my task in this world but its not something that's easy to get used to. I guess what I mean is that I am becoming used to never getting used to it... Thinking about  Ogun and Legba right now for some reason...it occurs to me that they may be better symbols for certain parts of my false personality than what I can my "inner Malcolm x" and my "inner Marven Gaye" respectively (I mean "false personality" only in the sense that there is a risk of over-identification with at those "archetypes")... also these days I am feeling like checking out some of the Michael Teachings again (particularly "Tao to Earth" and "Earth to Tao" by Jose Stevens). Finally, playing the Guqin has had the effect of tuning me in to things Chinese, so I might just start consulting (or just rereading) the I Ching again.

Sold

Old crazy two-fold self-deluding fool
to listen (... to believe!)
this April Apples' offerings; tendertiny
pinkpale promises, bright leaves,
the brash and balmy strength
of innocence sans toughness thoughtless
of its own caprice

Salesman of Light at my hearts door,
keeping up the cheerful patter of the breeze,
displaying on a dozen eager arms
these lovely pseudo-bargains of delight;
"One-time offer"
"Guaranteed!"
"A steal at any price!"

But some lessons it would be too sad to learn,
Some suffering rank cowardice to shun;
We both know that this April pitch has run
on far to long to end in failure; indeed
this year I've lingered longer on the front porch
of my pleasure than the last year

and they say that wisdom comes with getting old!

Well better friend to heart than master
come; the deal is in the bag Sir;
you have won again;
I'm sold...



Brightness

 waves of reflection dazzle me
floating in a volume black as mystery
rich loam of perception
I follow you and you chase me
but between us now the distance doesn’t change;
distance is just a name…

Chorus:

How we forget our oldest friends
green leaf and water light and wind
stare up at the clouds until your mother calls you in to dinner
now past future smile at me
beads on the string eternity
pearls for the wedding night of kind experience
and lavish innocence

Brightness...

Body grandmother to the man
Child the father, and the Soul their piety
rocks cradles of laughter
asks grown up childishness to end
and let the child and adult meet again as friends
and our true life begin

Still we forget our oldest friends;
Rest, wonder, walking, breath and skin…
Lie on the grass until your mother calls you in to dinner
past present future smile at me
beads on the string eternity
pearls for the wedding day of kind experience
and hopeful innocence…

Brightness...

Bridge:

prismed sight
contracepted light
cutting outer sky
from the dark womb of our eyes,
wake from single
visions sleep
and blind reasons blight
to the rose of delight
the loud geese in their flight

Brightness...

Sad conniving arrogance
prideful, pleading innocence of helplessness
of shame of confusion,
I caught you adding to the mood
just ornament enough to make the gift
the size of the gratitude

and I won’t forget my oldest friends
Bugs, smells and laughter, rocks and wrens
I’ll Stretch out in my life ‘til Mother calls me in to dinner
Then I’ll go on inside and see
all of my friends come back to me
Past, Present, Future, Mother
Time, eternity,
The grass, the Sun, the Sea…

Brightness…

Float

Dance around the Tree of Life
and Levity will come to you;
pull your own weight and strife
will give you that much more to pull

for elegance is effortless
its nothing that you plan or do
give up self-righteousness
and it will find its way to you

Give up this senseless war
with gravity and grace
holding yourself in store
or upright in some precious place
and float...

You say you'll lose control
and probably that is quite true
but only if your soul
is not what you consider you..
How can we live in peace
when we coerce ourselves each day;
holding ourselves aloof
from what supports us anyway?

Pride comes between the fall
and the forgiving earth
delaying for one and all
the day we find our second birth
and float...

Bridge:
So anchors of self righteousness
away
here comes the adventure
that you and the world have conspired to enter;
the storm that you cannot stray
let yourself go and not know
the way;
the needle must float in the water to show
were you are where your going
and when you stop holding you'll find where you were
always

see how the lovely moon
floats high above the inland sea
Poised in its gracious love
'twixt levity and gravity?
that is the way things are
the way that we must learn to be
getting out of our own way
we come to set each other free

so may all of us stiff-necked fools
find grace and love some day;
fall from our pedestals
into the sea
of every day
and float....



By I-P Kerren Odori

{note:I thought I coined the word "consensuality" but I just googled it and it turned up, though in a rather different sense than I mean it. What I am referring to is the coming together of Inner and Outer Consensus between and within Individual-Persons. Anyway, being a "Consensualist" is by no means something exclusively related to Intimate "relationships", but here are some old songs of mine that deal with in that sense to some extent. There are Hindu (-esque), Chinese (-ish), and Folk-Blues and Soul Ballad melodies and arrangements to the songs respectively. The quotation is there to set the tone I guess. Its from an old essay of mine. Like most statements of my ideals, its meant as a clarifying and orienting statement; something to point a direction to work toward rather than as a council of perfection. I am currently working on an another essay on the subject. –I-P}





"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. "





--from the Essay "Sex, Gender and Healthy Culture integralscience.motime.com archive Mar/27/06



Serpent in the Sky No. 1

Jasmine smoke unraveling there
Thickening ages to hours
We’ve been waiting calmly aware
Feeling the presence of powers here and
Slowly to the rhythm of Life
So slowly as to leave us shaken
We espy in each others eyes
The Serpent has awakened and the
Serpent is rising…

Tantra Deva enter my night
Let me feel your Kundalini rise
Nothing false and nothing so bright
As the Light in my Yoginis eyes and
Sultry sunset smoldering skies
Mystery into the bargain;
Will we die or will we deny
The Serpent in the Garden of His
Sad satisfaction…

Dawn Creeps to the window again
Incense long since turned to ashes
Where two Lingered neither remain
But ecstasy silently flashes there and
There’ll be no uncoupling though
Neither hot passion and sighing;
Heaven above Heaven below:
The Serpents in the Sky and flying
Into the morning….


Serpent in the Sky No. 2


Here where the Cherry Blooms
Although the summer days end
the Maiden, though with her Groom
Will always be a Maiden
The moon in the dewdrop lives
the Goddess in Our Lady
The Jade Gate receives and Gives;
A Goddess or a Baby..

And brave is she
for the dragons dead
(the red dragon)
wise is she
for the dragons dead
And she is a Person

And Dragon is
And Dragon is
The
Serpent in the Sky…

The Stalk rises in the spring
and stays on through the winter
The Bridegroom to become a King
The Jade Palace does enter
And may they Eternal lie
in Happiness together
May Phoenix and Serpent Fly
In blessedness and pleasure

And brave is He
For the Tigers Dead
(The White Tiger)
Wise is He
For the Tigers Dead
And he is a Person

And Tiger is
And Tiger is
The
Serpent in the Sky…


Tinkers

Don’t expect me to connive
like every love song does
at the misery that turns your heart to me
or the desperation or the settling of old scores
with the father I will never be…

There’s a wound that you’ve been hiding from
I have one too
and it hurts to feel the sun shine down on it
It is ugly but it is apart of me and you
And that's not the part of friendship to forget

‘Cause the Devils not the only one who smiles at Sin
God does too, but its a different kind of Smile...
Theres a hole in both our buckets
Will we put more water in
Or practice bein’ tinkers for a while?

I will never just ignore the wino of the world
distracted by your conversation and your grace
theres no market for distractions here, no "guys and girls";
that kind'a money never was green in this place

Well you might think I am ruining the feeling tone
and all the magic of our incipient romance
but its not me who’s the wallflower here I’ll have you know
and this is just my way of asking you to dance..

‘Cause the Devils not the only one who smiles at Sin
God does too, but its a different kind of Smile…
There’s a hole in both our buckets
Will we put more water in
Or practice bein’ tinkers for a while?

Are You Sure?

I am waiting for the question
that I ask of you
I am waiting for the question;
"Are you sure?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?
Is it in our highest purpose?
I am waiting for the question
"are you sure?"

"Are you asking heart and body?
Is it clear within your mind?
Are you checking intuition?
Are you sure?"

"Is there something you're gainsaying,
hiding, censoring, betraying,
Are you sincere or only playing?
Are you Sure?"



Bridge:
"Stop, in the name of Love"
Don't let us betray our love
for all of each other
for all of ourselves (repeat)

I have waited, taken careful aim
and still missed by a mile;
I'm not expecting something perfect
something pure

If we dream then we'll awaken
if not well then well mistaken
well recieved, given and taken:
"Are you sure?"



--I-P Kerren Odori

Neighborhood Post

Due Process

So, in order to try to be more involved as a neighbor in my community, I joined the "Process Team", which is a small group of people who, among other things, take on the work of facilitating good communication process between individual members of Twin Oaks and within the community as a whole. Members of the process team do things like facilitate the infrequent community meetings as well as conflict resolution meetings between two or more willing members of the community. We also are involved with coming up with and putting out surveys and questionnaires to members of the community. In general I got a sense that there was  some precarious balance being struck between improving community process and facilitating and helping to inform the community about whatever processes happen to currently exist either officially or as norms. I was much more conscious of and excited about the former part of the job than the latter.  It seemed to me that the immediate problem was more the lack of participation in any kind of intentional face to face communication process at all then the nature and quality of any of the established processes themselves (In retrospect I find it hard to say why I should have had this point of view). 

At any rate, when I joined the process team, didn't have the community "feedback process", much less the process team's required participation in it in mind. The feedback is a kind of one-sided forced inquisition that "a problem person" (by which i mean a person one or more other community members think of that way) has to go through. The person is usually someone suspected of violating some "community agreement or norm"  (I put this term in quotes both because the "community" doesn't seem to me to really agree about much at all and because the process by which such agreement might be facilitated and renewed--regular general meetings for example--is passively resisted by those whose positions of relative comfort might be jeopardized by changes in the status quo.) The feedback is not supposed to be punitive in intent but, so far as I can tell, it is certainly experienced that way by the those who are forced (at least people certainly feel forced and there can certainly be both formal and informal sanctions if one refuses) to go through it. Moreover there is often some kind of "contract" that the "focus person" is obliged to sign which is designed to please "the prosecution".

Anyway, it occurred to me, after being on the team for awhile, to suggest that we review this whole feedback process, which always seemed to me to be essentially unfair, and see if we could agree among ourselves about just what was wrong with it and what could possibly replace it, and then post our findings to the community as a joint process team evaluation and recommendation. Maybe there would be enough interest for us to have a well attended community meeting about it followed by the formal adoption of something better. What follows is the result of my own closer inspection and evaluation of the Feedback policy, which, for reasons contained in the text, I posted to my community as an Individual-Person rather than as a member of the process team. 

Feedbacks and Due Process at Twin Oaks
posted by I-P for Healthy Culture

 One

The punitive aspect of the feedback is in its one-sidedness. since displeasing others (even many others) is not the same as being wrong and since the displeasure (as well as any wrongness) may be just as strong or stronger in the other direction, it is hard, in any disagreement or problem, to see the fairness of putting one of the two parties in a one-sidedly defensive  and passive situation, effectively giving the other party the right to question, judge and complain (or even just the right to chose or limit the topic of discussion) without itself being vulnerable to the same treatment.

Moreover, If special punishment is not attached to being put in such a situation then that is even more reason why the feed back should not be unilateral  and why the issue in question should not be limited to  that chosen by only one party; if its a healthy, non-punitive process, then why limit it only to the "focus person"? There is no a priori reason why either a given individual or any group of individuals should be expected to be less open to correction, change, and growth--and the feedback that can lead to this--then any another individual or group, whatever the relative numbers are between the two parties. Putting any minority through an unpleasant process that the majority is not willing to go through is equivalent to punishing the minority for being a minority and correspondingly privileging the majority just for being a majority. Since more is not necessarily better, any more than might is right, it is difficult to justify the asymmetry of the normal feedback proceedings no matter what the relative numbers are. (I want to be clear here that I am not saying the majority is necessarily wrong any more than that its necessarily right, I'm saying that there is nothing about being a majority that justifies exemption or special privileges in its process with a minority.)

Nor is it clear that, even when numbers are equal, person or group A should be privileged or exempted from inquiry, just because they are more aggressive, proactive (or, it could be, just more intolerant or mean-spirited) than person or group B and so happen to be the ones initiating the proceedings. In other words, there is no reason why a disagreement should have recourse to being escalated in a way where one of the disputants is given the advantage of being exempt from  questioning, culpability, correction etc..while the other is not. Not only does it prejudice the out come of the dispute and likely obscure the real nature and causes of the situation, but it provides an antisocial incentive for escalating any such disagreement with out any attempt at balanced inquiry, mature discussion or mutual understanding and accommodation.    

Returning to the Majority vs Minority situation, there are countless historical situations of majorities oppressing minorities through legally subjecting minorities (gays, women,witches, people of color, indigenous peoples,poor people, or just unpopular individuals) to one-sided processes just because they can (this is not to mention the analogous situations, of pogroms, mob rule, gag rape, mugging or any other movement of a self-righteous majority against a minority or weaker group or individual without a symmetrical due process). Of course the majority always thinks and feels that it is right in such situations.  Often enough the minority also thinks and feels that its right (or at least no more wrong then the majority, even if it might be too cowed and intimidated to say so). Whatever the relative numbers may be, such a situation is morally symmetrical, and it is our collective response in  just in such situations (were a majority is against and minority or individual) that reveal whether our institution really has anything at all to do with fairness, equality, or cooperation (much less kindness or{here insert some other relevant community bylaw or value, or just human value}), or whether we are, when it comes down to it, no  better than a mob self-complacent bullies and  cowards.

What seems to follow from this is that, a case of "the community or some subset thereof against X" , the possibility is just as much that "X" is "right" as that "the community" (etc...) is "right". Since, as in most relationships, it takes two to tango, both the community (or some subset) and "X" are equally likely to be guilty of some failure to live up to the spirit of our values and agreements. The proceedings of a feedback (if it would still be called that) should reflect this likely mutual and general responsibility not only in the form of the investigation or inquiry but in the form of its possible outcomes.

So far as proceedings go, any process between X and the community or some official or unofficial subset thereof, should be conducted in a bilateral and multilateral way in which the "focus person" or their behavior is not presumed at the outset to be the only, or even the main, problem or problem cause.  In such a process the focus person, the dissatisfied instigators of the feedback, as well the relevant extant community rules, norms or states of affairs, will be equally subject to potential questioning and criticism in terms of their respective failure to live up to our values and agreements. So far as outcomes go, it follows from the above that any resultant contract between the community and X  be possibly bilateral, outlining concrete steps the community (or some formal or informal part of it) should be willing to take to live up to our stated values AS WELL AS what person or group X is also expected to do in this regard. The likely result of such a process, if the details are handled well, is the improvement, growth and maturity, of both the individual and the community as a whole, in contrast to the  present feedback process which seems incapable of strengthening anything but resentment on one side and lame complacency on the other.  

 Though the word "Feedback" is not inherently inappropriate for such a radically improved process, it would probably avoid confusion just to call it something else (a "community hearing" or something) and abandon feed-backs in there current form forever.




Two

I wrote the first part of the above as part of a process team project arguing for a revision of the rules of the Feedback (or perhaps for its possible replacement with something else), on the basis that it violates, among other things the bylaw preference for constructive rather than punitive ways of dealing with problems and individuals. It was the first piece of work that I felt was actually good enough for me to take process team labor credits for.  I suggested the project myself, (purely coincidentally),  a week before the current feedback situation existed. Having become so clear about the the inherent unfairness of the Feedback in the process of writing the above I cannot, in good conscience actively facilitate it simply because, as a member of the process team, it is "my job" to do so. In the words of Cool Hand Luke and in the spirit (if not the results) of the Nuremberg trials; "callin' it 'you're job' don't make it right, boss...". 

I therefor have decided to make this paper also serve as public announcement of my resignation from the process team. Effective Wednesday October 8 2008. I have myself considered the pros and cons of staying on the team and trying to mitigate the inherent unfairness of the feedback process (among other such unfair or coercive processes) from within and I very much respect the decision (of any current members of the  process team who might agree with me about some or all such issues), to choose such a path. For my part, I cannot square such a non-mandatory compromise, with the development of my own character.  Without some reason to expect likely growth and maturity of the community and its processes as a result of my participation in such a compromise, I think I could be more effective in furthering both my own and its growth as a relatively free agent.  I very much enjoyed being on the process team for the short while I was on it and very much wish the best for Tikvah, Ethan, and Purl and anyone else who might join it with good intentions.

Sincerely,

I-P

Postscript

I want to say something about the interpretation of the bylaws in general here. I want to emphasize the distinction between positive values and necessary evils and point up the implications of such distinctions. The bylaws are clear that not only furthering equality and cooperation but actively diminishing competition are among its positive values. Since capitalism  in its most typical form is all about competition, hierarchies and coercion, it would seem to follow that those provisions and  arrangements  in the bylaws which were clearly meant to facilitate our (successful enough) participation in such competition would constitute necessary evils rather than positive values. One implication of this seems to me to be that whenever opportunity allows, structural or otherwise attempts should be made to progress towards that which is a positive value and diminish that which is a necessary evil. Managerial hierarchies, the  reduction of  individuals to quantitative abstractions, (whether of money or labor hours) are all clearly aspects of twin oaks culture that mimic corporate capitalist culture and thus constitute necessary evils (at best) rather than positive values. As such, active and ongoing experiments in mitigating or eliminating such necessary evils (even when this would involve some ¨lowering" of our ¨standard of living¨) is a reasonable expectation of anyone living here, whereas the reflexive and unquestioning defense of such evils is not.

end of post.

Well, so much for my brief experiment with being on the Process Team as a way of being more formally involved with my Neighborhood in a healthy way. For the time being I feel pretty confirmed in my feeling that working within a "system" that is itself not healthy is something of a last resort to be chose only when there seems to be no way to effect the system for the better otherwise. Actually I mean something like "moving deeper into the system" rather then "working within the system" because, of course I am still "working in the unhealthy system, both of twin oaks and of the world beyond it. The point is that the balance of working to heal the system and becoming a willing and unconscious part of it is likely to tip strongly toward the latter the more one concedes more than the minimum participation necessary to stay alive to effect healing at all. What I want to get practice in is participating in rituals of togetherness not rituals of apartness like the feed back, and  staying on the process team and going through with the feedback would just have amounted to my learning (in some sense voluntarily is time) one more ritual of inner and outer alienation. It would have been a  disservice to myself and the community even if i could have slightly mitigated its effect by some action of mine. Such an act of mitigation might even have served to help legitimate and disguise the essential nature of a process that is inherently unfair.

3 people signed my post indicating willingness to get together to talk about it and its implications (one of the people was the "focus person" of the most current feedback) and as yet I have not made any gesture to get this to happen. I am not sure what is keeping me from doing so. Maybe this post will have the effect of a reminder and challenge for me either to do so or get clearer as to why I am not...

Welcome and Thanks.

I-P

Post Script

I share the gist of the above post in a dicussion group about intentional community at gaia.com (I had retitled it "Community Due Process; dealing with "problem people"). What follows is the responce I got and my reply.

Re: Community Due Process: dealing with "problem people", Iuval said:

"IP, perhaps we are all “problem people”, although some may be more problematic than others (like some of the animals who were more equal than others in Animal Farm :-)) Can we find a process that is more symmetrical and less punitive? I think Oneida already did it, and other possibilities abound. Their process was called “mutual criticism”, and it wasn't totally symmetrical because their “leader” was exempt. They had it regularly, whether there was a problem or not. Some communists had “self-criticisms” but I think they eventually evolved into charades. I actually like the idea of a self-criticism as long as everyone has to do it and does it in a spirit of humility and being able to laugh at themselves. I think the Bruderhof also have something similar to a feedback, but I don't remember if it is symmetrical or not. IMO, anything that prevents egos from getting too big is a good thing. I personally have no problems with hierarchies based on wisdom and experience and competence as long as they are not rigid hierarchies and there are checks and balances to prevent egos from getting too big."

"I hope we can develop systems that can deal with problem people (that is, all of us)  while acknowledging that the responsibility for the problem is systemic, not fully personal. I was  dealing with two problem people at the last IC I was at: myself (a provisional member) and  the full member , D,  who felt like I was the only problem person (as well as the previous members who left feeling like she was the problem person). At the end, D gave me a membership review/feedback where she asked me to leave based on what her assessement of my problem was (unless I was willing to make a correction in my attitude, which I was not able nor willing to make), and I was not really allowed to respond. I chose to leave until the system changes."
-Iuval

Re: Community Due Process: dealing with "problem people", I-P said:

Hi, Iuval,

Thanks for reading and responding to my rather long post. I definitely agree that  we are all “problem people” in one way or another, which is why I put the phrase in quotes in my title. I also like the idea of “mutual criticism” though I think it should extend to the community bylaws, and status quo as a whole and not just all of the individuals within it. I think that that was one of the things that was wrong with the “self-criticism” experiments. A healthy culture can, not only stand, but respond to, criticisms of itself and moreover actually encourages them, though again not unilaterally.

I suppose that I can agree with hierarchies that I would describe as situational, consensual and temporary, though I think to call such things “hierarchies” would probably be rather misleading (through the phrase "dynamic integral heterarchy"might describe it). For example, If, in a storm at sea, everybody has consensus to do as the captain says (not because he or she is “the captain” but because they spontaneously acknowledge that he or she is manifesting  “experience and wisdom” under the circumstances) then I would say that what is really happening is consensual rather than coercive, even if it would look different from outside. But for me the living and free quality of the consensus on the matter is the point. It could be the case after all that the captain is drunk, that the captain is–even temporarily– succumbing to his or her own sick culture in ways that relate to but  transcend the practical nature of the task at hand (for example—and such things have happened in the past-- the captain could succumb to valuing gold more than people and in an effort to lighten the load of the ship declare that certain persons be thrown overboard rather than the gold…)etc…

my point is not only that people exist (and have experience and wisdom) primarily as people (I would say as “individual-persons”) rather then as “officers” or job titles, and that their competence at anything else needs to be evaluated from that shared ground, but that even the  shared ground is  just as unstable as the deck of a ship in a storm, in that a person who is “well Balanced” as an individual-person and using the best of his or her experience at one moment might lose that balance in the next moment. Given the inherently dynamic nature of such things, I think it much better that an overt and formal egalitarianism generaly prevail over a rigid  specialization as the norm and that the latter (even when it is not rigid),  be subordinant to the former.

In such a situation of assumed primary equality and primary non-specialization as I am advocating, no one is obliged to turn off or repress their critical, creative, and moral  faculties in deference to some  pre-established hierarchy (though they themselves might decide to do so in response to the actual details of some real and usually temporary situation). In such a situation no one is in danger of being corrupted either by “power ” on the one side or by servitude on the other, and bilateral habits of universal respect (rather than dangerous and usually unnecessary unilateral and mechanical habits of command and obedience) are formed all around.

Anyway, so far as your experience goes, I can only say that it seems fairly typical. I think that the intentional community movement in general has yet to realize in practice that  collective “might” is not any more “right” than Individual “might” and that if a so-called  intentional community is going to amount to much more than a mob with a land base, those within it must learn to understand “rights” in terms of responsibilities–not only direct responsibilities to the land and to their own growth as persons, but to the creation of the kind of minimally  coercive and essentially healthy culture  which I think is alone compatible with the long term health of the Land Base and of all its occupants.

 After all, if “Might is Right” ,  then rapists have the right to rape, child molesters have the right to molest etc…And this implication extends  equally to  the “right” to private ownership of land (which is ultimately acquired and maintained by “might”). And this is so whether the “right” and “might” is individually or collectively held. Moreover, since ANY in-group with the power or numbers (the “might”) behind them  can usually be relied on to convince THEMSELVES (usually with a little more of a farce of deliberation then the average mob),  of their “Righteousness” in excluding or coercing others, the only check against the resurgence in so called intentional community of the de facto vileness and pathology of the historical and contemporary state of affairs is, so far is I can see, some culture of coercion/ alienation/hierarchy-minimizing due-process, such as I outlined in the second half of my my post.

 The due-process I describe and advocate would of course be only one aspect of the healthy culture in which it could credibly exist and thrive. But it makes more sense to direct folks to my profile and blog if they are curious about my own ideas of what such a culture might be like in general.

Thanks again for your response Iuval! Hope we have occasion to dialog more,

I-P

Soul Post

So you might remember that there is such a thing as a healthy culture ritual called the " Individual-Personal check-in" which involves 5 "reports" by each participant (one in each of the 5 venues of Individual-personhood) on what happens to be up in those venues--in the sense of what degree of sick or healthy culture is going on in each of them. The ritual is Ideally one in which at least two people participate but for demonstration and other purposes, I also seem to have adopted that form in certain blog posts here and elsewhere.  My last post here in this vein was a "neighbor post' in which I reported sharing some thoughts about "gender and adulthood" at a community meeting here at Twin Oaks.


Another venue of Individual-Personhood is something I describe as the "Soul" or "Social-Religious venue", which has to do with healthy coming-together with others in terms of world-views in general and "Ultimate things" in particular. "Ultimate things" here relates equally to philosophies such as atheism (in which case the ultimate thing is physical death, and "soulful" relating to another means relating to them in the light of that presumed finality) and to any other philosophic or religious assumptions or beliefs. The Idea is to try to engage with others around such topics in a way that facilitates mutual respect, learning, growth and perhaps even some degree of tentative consensus. In practice, this kind of thing requires at least some degree of an "everybody has a piece of the Lie and the Truth" attitude , as this allows folks both to uninhibitedly  engage disagreement and at the same time avoid competitiveness and rigid dogmatism. Such a mood is of course rather difficult to  reach maintain in practice, which  I am sure is one of the reasons people tend to avoid engaging each other around such subjects.


But the vital necessity of learning how to have such a discussion in this venue, is clear for me in the general fact that people maneuver in, and order their world based on their world-views (whether or not their real view is always the same as what they publicly profess) and  to the extent to which we live in a shared world, radical disagreements about ultimate things are either going to be constructively engaged in a way that can lead to greater understanding and real cooperation, or they just become the motives for coercion, manipulation, or outright wars of one form or another..


So I happen to be engaged in such a "Soul" dialog with a person called Samatman who I met when he was visiting Twin Oaks. Samatman is very interested in founding a community based on the idea of what he calls the "Shared Self" and on what he calls "Shared Self Practice" which, in my experience of it, focuses on a certain breathing practice. His world-view seems to be inspired in large part by his understanding of physics as well as by his encounters with the teachings and person of Meher Baba and others.
 

Anyway, we have been engaging in discussions with the Idea of possibly finding some common ground in our world views as a basis for perhaps founding a community together based on some co-created synthesis of his shared self Idea and my whole "healthy culture" thing.


Immediately into our discussions of these issues though, we ran into the difference between his Idea and emphasis on "Self" and my own idea of "SelfNature", as a conception of Ultimate Identity. SelfNature (which it is sometimes more useful to refer to as "NatureSelf") is for me the ultimate "fruit" of which "Individual-Personhood" is the "Flower" (the "Tree of Life" being in some sense the rest of the "plant"). For me the Idea of SelfNature expresses the fundamental togetherness of the subjective (Self) and the objective (Nature), in the way that the idea of Self does not, and so the sticking point in Samatman's and my dialogs seems to stem chiefly on this issue of identity a lot of the time.


Recently samatman lent me the book "God Speaks" by Meher Baba, as a way of facilitating our mutual understanding of each other and I wrote the following to him in response to reading the first 4 chapters:
 

To Samatman,



so I don't see that it is true (good, beautiful, alive) to believe that "the evolving consciousness of the soul attains its full development in human form" as Meher Baba says, since I think it is precisely through the transcendence of the "human form" and "Human Identity" (and of "species-identity" in general as a separative Identity-Politics), and its replacement with something like Individual-Personhood, that the process of true "development" or "evolution" can begin. I think the whole of "human exceptionalism" and "pride" in the human form, even in the relative sense implied in the "Great Chain of Being" idea, involves a form of separative inegalitarian alienation that prevents living friendship and healthy mutuality between relatively distinct variations on the Theme of SelfNature.


I think that the sense of species hierarchy itself is something that comes from a failure to realize and affirm the ultimate togetherness of SelfNature , since it would seem to imply that that which seems closer to "Nature" is somehow further from some form of "Self" conceived as other and superior (to Nature). I think this assumption of separation and superiority (even, as sometimes happens, when the accent and superiority is given to "Nature" rather than "Self") is actually a conceit of the separative ego which has no real understanding or conscious experience of anything but primary alienation and apartness. It is this egoistic alienation, this mispercieved impression of primary apartness, that is projected on inner/outer experience and leads to the kind of "ranked distinctions" involved in the so called "Traditional view" (which view is, I think, more a function of relatively recent agricultural and in-egalitarian mutations of human culture and cognition than anything truly normative in human culture).


It occurs to me that perhaps another way of saying this (in terms closer to Baba's) is that the "souls" perceptual association with/as a given form of existance is different from the the egos cognitive one-sided attachment to a factional identity. The Soul (or, to be more consistant, the "Soul-Body") in a certain sense "delights in" (and in a certain sense "is") the full continuum between the particular and the general, between the "variation" of particular body and the "Theme" of SelfNature. The Soul is, in other words, fond of togetherness and of the paradoxical togetherness of togetherness and apartness. It likes both Self and Nature, and likes (and in a way ,is) both multiplicity and unity equally because its ultimate consciousness and longing is for the Spirit that manifests through and beyond both multiplicity and unity, beyond even SelfNature/NatureSelf. This delight of the Soul in the means as well as the end is because it knows that it is only such paradoxical delight that will ultimately attract That which is equally beyond both Means and End. it is almost the essense of what the soul is.  It is the dissociated (disembodied) ego, on the other hand, that is the "sourpuss" that is always trying to rigidly impose one-sidedness and permanently subordinate one side of a coin to the other. Such a one-sided ego can't dance (by "dance" I mean something like "negotiate paradox"), while the soul is almost the joy of dance itself.


Any way without a paradox-embracing soulfull life-logical form of cognition, the ego must rule and apartness, apartheid, caste must emerge as primary (both in religion and in social order) in a way that they never would if the true paradoxical togetherness of Self and Nature (of SelfNature/NatureSelf) were perceived, conceived, affirmed and realized. What I suspect has happened in India as well as in other "civilizations" is that prevalence of the trauma of factional, war-induced hierarchical social conditions of caste and rank (over any preexisting conditions of "primitive" equality or community) is echoed in a cosmology and Identity politics that at least strongly lends itself to misinterpretation in terms of alienation, estrangement and onesidedness...I think such one-sidedness is implied in the concept of unilateral identity relation in which the Metaphysical Self "absorbs" or includes Nature in a way that subordinates the later (the same onesidedness is of course equally manifest when this condition is held, as in some forms of materialism for example, to be reversed).



SelfNature can only manifest in Entity-Experience when Entity-Experience reaches the "genericly-specific" and so paradoxical level of Identity that I would describe, not as "humanity" but as "Individual-Personhood" (or something very like it). I think the Identity-politics of Individual-Personhood is an example of the kind of paradoxical, togetherness that is in harmony with Soul (perhaps I should say with "World-Soul") and in terms of which this Soul as the Entity-Experience of connected individuality can best ultimately Manifest SelfNature and find its ultimate consummation (and perhaps rebirth) in its trans-formative encounter with Spirit and Ultimate Freedom (which I contend transcends, SelfNature, Entity-Experience and Identity Itself). Well was a bit of a mouthful, but I hope it is at least not a misleading mouthful. Probably, gesturing at Spirit with words is always going to be misleading...


So, for these and more reasons, regarding self and other primarily (or even secondarily) in terms relatively factional identities, as defined by species, kingdom, gender etc, seems precisely the opposite of what is needed to make room for the realization of our Shared SelfNature as Individual-Persons...Putting "Self" (no matter how allegedly different from "self" or ego) as the top of such a one-sided hierarchy is part of what facilitates the one-sidedness and the Hierarchy. The Idea of SelfNature avoids this and, without completely rejecting hierarchy, allows for its paradoxical subordination to equality and mutuality in a way that makes real Friendship and Community between and within all Being(s) possible...



Having said all of this, I think it at least possible that Meher Baba would agree with this interpretation of things and that his presentation of the situation is just a result of his dealing as best he could with the language and tradition which he inheireted. I base this in part on his statement that "God cannot be discussed, explained etc..but only "lived". I feel almost exactly the same about "Spirit". Perhaps we could commune on that level and come to terms about the map leading to that  Living experience by filtering out the alienating biases of sick culture in various parts of the world. At any rate, I havent read the rest of the book, so perhaps I'll be the one who ends up changing their language and/or understanding...so far though, this is where I am at with it...



Looking forward to discussion,
 

I-P



I haven't got a formal reply to this by Samatman but the point for this post is just to report on the nature and quality of how the conversation is being conducted. From this point of view I thinks it is going very well in that, whether or not we will ever fully agree on these things, we seem to be becoming friends and learning and growing as a result of our engagement with each other.


This is probably due in some part to the fact that be are not only sharing world-views but also rituals. In our last meeting, for example, Samatman shared with me his "Shared Self Breathing Practice". The fact that I could not help but immediately modify it into a Shared SelfNature breathing practice" didn't seem to bother him and it certainly didn't prevent me from being very grateful for his helping to engender what will probably become a new ritual of Healthy Culture.  Far from being frustrating, I think the whole experience lead to each of us understanding the others ideas and experience better. Similarly, in our meeting before this,I shared with Samatman the non-virtual version of the Individual-Personal check-in ritual, which he participated in and which I think like-wise began to stir up ideas in his mind about how to adapt that ritual to his own assumptions about Self.


So far, my engagement with Samatman as a Soul,that is in the context of worldviews and considerations of ultimate things (but also as a whole Individual-Person), seems to be going well. I think it's progress probably depends on the extent to which we can continue regard ourselves and each other in terms of what we share (or what we believe we share) rather than in terms of what we do not. This is tricky because the identity we believe we ultimately share is not the same identity! Still, my hope is that something (namely "Friendship") is happening as a result of our encounters that transcends dogma, and that will eventually help heal whatever rigidities and fear-based motives and (mis)understandings that exist within and between us.


We'll see...Listening...considering...


PS..


"Considering" has recently joined "Listening", "Supporting", and "Challenging" as a "co-implicated" aspect of the relating dynamic i call "Living Friendship", which I now consider a four-fold rather than a three-fold thing..,hopefully more on this in another post...

"Everybody has a piece of the Truth; Everybody has a piece of the Lie"--Healthy Culture Proverb

Strange how one can feel ashamed for things that one doesn't actually feel guilty for (not because the things are not wrong or stupid but because ...well because no body's perfect...), and feel guilty for the shame itself. At least I can sometimes feel this way...

From the point of view of Healthy Culture, shame is a "public/private" aspect of the culture of apartness rather than an "individual-personal" aspect of healthy culture, and the difference between the public/private and the individual-personal is precisely the one-sided dissociation of a persons "piece of the Truth" from their "piece of the Lie" that is embodied in the concept and reality of a "Public Image". Usually the public side of the image is the side that constitutes ones "piece of the Truth" or rather its the part that corresponds with what is praiseworthy or at least acceptable to "ones public" and usually to oneself. Ones "piece of the Lie" (or at least ones "piece of the currently not respectable") is in this case relegated to ones "private" life if its is acknowledged at all.

On the other side of the public/private coin, the whole concept of the "private" seems to be based on the assumption that "it ain't nobodies business if I do", which is to say that there are certain things and behaviors in our lives that no one has a legitimate interest in but ourselves because they effect no one but ourselves. However its not clear why any thing or behavior would be hidden in this privacy if there were not some chance that sharing it would threaten the one-sided public image of ourselves that we have bought into and identify with. Its also clear that many things considered "private business" in this way, such as excessive drug use (legal or illegal), or alcohol use are arguably the legitimate interest of others since they potentially effect others in the form of car or other accidents emotional callousness or violence to others etc..in fact most "private business" has some kind relevance or effect on others because, from the individual-personal point of view our very existence is inherently social (personal) just as much as it is "psychological" (individual) and vis-versa.

But of course, as I said, what keeps the "private" private is precisely "the public", that is, the one-sided and phony public image that in a culture of dissociation and apartness becomes the norm. In such a culture the actual togetherness of everyones "piece of the Lie" with "their piece of the Truth" and the paradoxical and unpredictable fluidity with which both the Lie and the Truth manifest in this or that given situation and individual, is not accepted at all, and so the dualistic, simplistic either/or kind of logic that dominates all other areas of sick culture does so here as well. From such a public point of view of mandated one-sidedness, a one-sidedly positive public image can only be replaced with an equally one-sidedly negative one. That is, if you are not a "good guy" then you are a "bad guy" and that is that.

Anyone then trying to come out of the passive isolation and alienation of "private life" into a more authentic form of relationship with others and themselves has to expect, not an exchange of his or her phony public image for acceptance as an authentic and imperfect Individual-Person who obviously has changing moral/ethical strengths and weaknesses like everyone else, but rather they can reasonably expect summary relegation to the equally phony and one-sided negative public image of a "bad guy", with all the ostracism and shaming that that implies. This means, among other things, that in sharing ones private life, one either has to reflexively approve of all of ones actions, admitting no values in terms of which one might sometimes be oblidged to judge ones own self lacking, or be dismissed as a hypocrite or worse.  Under such silly circumstances its certainly understandable that most people choose to keep their "private life" private even though in the long run this is not conducive to happiness or real belonging.

I think this entire situation has a lot to do with family dynamics and with so called adults being stuck in a less than mature stages of human development in which the unrealistic idealization or blaming of a parent gets carried over into adult life. The parent who can do no wrong (or at least the one on whom we feel most dependent) becomes the first idealized "Public Figure"--the first "hero" for the child who, if they cannot yet be such a hero themselves, can at least find safety and belonging in his or her good graces by being a loyal and obedient "follower". This situation is usually made more complex in that often which ever parent is not awarded this positive hero public image gets to carry the negative "bad cop" or "villain" role. Indeed the "hero" imprint will often arise precisely from the dynamics of feeling "rescued" from one parent by the other (though I don't think the one-sided public figure problem changes any when both parents happen to be idealized or both vilified since, among other things, in that case other adults usually become the "bad guys"). There is also the fact of sibling (and later "peer group) dynamics which however, in the absence of any actual maturity in the participants, can only vary the game of who gets to be the stand in leader/parent/good guy public image role, who gets to "follow" this "hero", who gets to be the "bad guy" and who is kicked out of the game all together. I am sure that this doesn't exhaust the possibilities, but you get the picture.

One can also see the elements of the beginning of competition here, in that the object of such sibling or peer group games in time becomes deciding which of the players will be assigned which of these roles, with the Hero being the same as the "Winner" of course...see footnote.

All of this is understandable in infanthood and childhood because an infant or child by definition lacks the maturity, insight, detachment, perspective, sophistication (and education) to see their parents as simply imperfect "individual-persons" suffering from a sick culture like themselves and everybody else. They are pretty much forced by cognitive limitations to experience everything in a more or less, cartoon, simplistic, almost mythological manner. And of course in such a culture as ours, the sad case is that the parents themselves will also lack the full development of most of these things, though usually to a lesser degree than their children.

Under such circumstances it should not be surprising that such dynamics underly the political and social "games people play" as pseudo adults, which fact accounts for the simplistic one-sided public image of the Leader/Parent/Hero and the negatively one-sided public image of the villain,"criminal", or bad guy. It also accounts for the equally phony and one-sided positive public image of the "in-group" of followers of the "right" leader(s) who like wise exchange their authenticity for the pseudo-belonging of membership in that group (the price of which is a tacit agreement not only to ignore and repress, or downplay the leaders piece of the Lie but in large part their own as well, usually projecting all evil on "the bad guy" and his or her, it or their deluded followers).

Its worth emphasizing here that all of this one-sidedness has its emotional origins not only in the trauma of extremely one-sided feelings of aversion (fear), abandonment, and alienation experienced by every infant and child, but in the further cognitive development by which the child's first phony identity (as a "good" boy or girl in good graces with the parent/¨hero¨) begins to be founded on such experiences, which constitutes a first self-betrayal of their (good and bad and good/bad-transcending) authentic individual selves. This betrayal of authentic experience of self and other in exchange for at least a convincing substitute for real affection, safety, acceptance and belonging (and for the corresponding diminishment of at least the acute form of the experience of unbearable fear and pain), is the template one which later phony Public images are developed.

The implications of this development of, and enslavement to, a phony one-sided persona and self-image (and the "good boy/girl" image can easily be traded for its opposite at a certain rebelious stage of development, without of course bringing the child closer to an experience of their whole selves), and the listing and discussion of all of the contributing factors to it are much too much to go into here.  I would like, however, to briefly mention here in passing the unhealthy kinaesthetic patterns that come from the compulsive or reactionary holding of ourselves in postures which trap us in an alienated relationship to gravity and cut us off from the effortless and elegant working of our own bodies, as these are not usually understood as resulting in large part from the trauma and stress of "posing" as a "good or bad boy or girl" (and later as a "cool", ¨sexy¨ or "tough", or "successful" ¨man¨ or ¨woman¨) in exchange for what we accept as belonging and love.

All of the above will be gone into further in future posts, but what I am really bring all of this up for right now is to go into how all of it relates to my efforts to communicate and share my ideas about, and experiments in, healthy culture in this blog (which is after all a kind of "Publication" and as such exposes me to the some version of the "public image" game).

What I struggle with of course is the fact that, if i want to get anybodies attention (even if its just to point out the childishness, and lose-lose nature of the simplistic, competitively one-sided and phony public image game, and to offer an alternative to it), I have to risk entering that very game (at least in the minds of those who cannot help but play the game them selves). In other words, just to communicate, in the dominant sick culture I have to risk being projected upon as a leader or hero or as an equally phony member in good standing of the "right group of followers or even (if more of a sibling thing is going on) the right elite group of co-leaders.

In order to escape being caught in such a "positive" one-sided and phony public image I have often been tempted to focus intensively and exclusively own my own many pieces of the Lie and post that (I've made many drafts of "blog confessions" of this kind). Obviously though, doing such a thing would not actually challenge the one-sided and childish immaturity behind the whole dynamic but just lead to my assuming a negative public image in the minds of those who were previously being one-sided and silly in the other extreme. Just as bad, such an "act of courageous defiance" might strengthen me as a real Hero in the minds of people in whom this whole dynamic is more sophisticated then usual but nevertheless equally unhealthy beside the point.

What makes all of this even more complicated is the fact that I do still suffer from sick culture myself and am of course therefore susceptible under the right conditions (though I think these conditions would be pretty unusual), to any and all of the above forms of phoniness (or to any other form for that matter). I could very well be drawn into some kind of phony "public leadership" role (which silly "rise" would inevitably lead to an equally silly "fall" in the typical tragic hero manner). Moreover, I do have moments of Shame regarding some of the sick culture that I have been, continue to be (and in some cases maybe always will be) involved in simply because I, like everyone else was born and initiated into sick culture and am susceptible to its one-sidedness and alienation. This Shame I speak of is of course itself just another manifestation of that sick culture; of the part of me that buys into one-sided expectations of righteousness and the brief and empty thrill of false acceptance and solidarity that goes alone with all of that. All of which is just to affirm that I myself have a piece of the Lie and a piece of the Truth and that there are conditions (some of which I don't know and some of which I do) during which the former (in this case in the form of a susceptibility to public image and the Shame that goes along with that) would manifest more than the latter. I am not sure if I feel ashamed of this Shame but I guess I still feel somewhat guilty for it, which makes just as little sense (but is just as understandable...).

It occurs to me that in writing this I could still be making some kind off underhanded or unconscious bid for "public approval" rather than making, from one individual-person to another, the appeal to adulthood good sense, goodwill, and living friendship that I think I am making, so I suppose I should say something a little more explicit just to make sure.

The Idea with all of these blog entries of mine is really just to start a conversation that leads to us comparing notes about what is going on in the world and in ourselves with an eye to doing something healing together about both these things (ourselves and the world) at the same time. For the most part, despite my previous "confession", I really am interested in Friendship rather than "public Leadership", and this means to me an inner and outer dynamic of listening, support, and challenge and not any kind of rigidly unilateral dynamics or hierarchies. So far as I can tell, my general understanding is appropriate (tentatively Good, True, Beautiful, Alive,) but a big part of my reason for sharing it is that I know that I could be wrong about this and want to be corrected if I am. (Even I am not corrected, as far a I am concerned, the Theory of Healthy Culture will always be a "Tentative Universal", always susceptible to challenge and alteration either in whole or in part, otherwise it would not be Alive...

So the invitation is something like this:

Lets stop seeing ourselves as leaders and followers with public/private self/other images and just be individual-persons trying to befriend and heal ourselves, each other and the world from the sick culture of apartness, alienation, phoniness, competition etc that we All suffer from, and lets try to nurture the living healthy culture that is also within us all. Lets see what we can do to create a culture of true friendship and adulthood that would begin to transform and heal sick culture inside and outside us. Rather than collude with (or against) each other in complacent in-group self-rightousness, lets create an open circle of listening, support, challenge and inner and outer healing in the egalitarian, compassionate, and paradoxical spirit of living friendship. This blog and my other writings amount to my notes about possible ways and reasons to do that...What are your Notes? What do you think? Lets compare notes and discuss the whole issue critically and in good faith. And if we can get some tentative agreement, lets collaborate further.

Now I am not sure that this message and its implied disclaimer (a disclaimer that disclaims inferiority as well as of superiority mind you) is really getting through in a primary way. Maybe some of my posts sound more righteous and dogmatic and less tentative then they should (I am dealing in many cases with universals, but hopefully it is at least clear by now that these are always offered as tentative universals rather than rigid dogmas)... I can't really get behind the Socratic thing of pretending I have no opinion or ideas about things (as if this were really possible with anybody), and that has always seemed annoyingly phony to me. Its always seemed better just to be explicit about ones diagnosis and prescription and be open to challenge. But that openness to challenge extends to critiques about the way I am going about expressing myself as well as what I am expressing so feel free to give feedback about that too.

Welcome and Thanks,

--I-P

{footnote: I think its worthwhile going into the effect of competition (as a regression to this unconsciously childish game of who gets the phony role of "hero"/winner, and who has to wear the equally phony one of "villain"/loser), on what should be adult discourse. I say this since I think it is the main reason for the future-diminishing dynamics between persons, nations, parties, religions,etc.., during disagreements or negotiations which otherwise would lead to the finding of the common ground and consensus necessary for cooperation rather than coercion. I'm mean, if the subtext of the discussion is really to find out who is the hero/insider/good guy/good boy and who is the villain/outsider/bad guy/bad boy, then the real common ground of unpredictably fallible (and unpredictably "virtuous") human individual-personhood is pretty much excluded at the outset by the implied rules of the game, and with it the possibility of a resolution without shaming. Such an underlying subtext insures that the outcome of the discussion will never reflect the real truth of either the specific or general situation. Since the implication of my "winning" the discussion is that I have no "piece of the Lie" (or at least none worth paying attention to), and your losing forces you to "admit" that you have no "piece of the truth" with the same qualification, the result of the game can never lead to either of our growth into mature self-aware adults since it precludes the possibility of any realization that can lead to such growth from the very outset. (compromise almost never has to do with any such realization or growth, but is usually just an unsatisfying expedient born of exhaustion).

Moreover since the final result of such a game can never be True (and so really Fair, since ultimately Fairness is inherently related to Truth), there is, deep down, no reason to think that "Fairness" has any thing to do with the game at all--the point really being just to win by any means necessary (in order not to have to relive those horrible infant and childhood feelings of "Badness", abandonment, vulnerability, rejection etc...),and to do so by the only means that the game allows, which is forcing that very experience on ones competitor. The fact that such dynamics underly the structure and functioning of basically all our political, economic, social, religious, and international institutions and discourse obviously does not bode well for that realization of a better future which is the primary preoccupation of actual adults (as opposed the ubiquitous psychological children and adolescents posing to themselves and each other as adults in "Public"--and Private-- life..)}

P.S. I suppose one could say that there is a kind of "legitimate leadership" which is based on spontaneous group consensus (at a given time in a given situation) that this or that person happens to know what is happening and what to do about it, and that there need not be any fear, coercion of sick culture involved in this. I acknowledge the phenomenon but decline to call it "leadership" since that word connotes for me a relatively static role and creates expectations beyond the actual moment of authentic collective consensus....in my experience it tempts people into a premature laxity or deferral of responsibility and critical, creative thinking. In this way the circulation of attention, expectation, inspiration and creativity of a group can be short circuited (as it can by the rigidity of the groups boundary itself). The speed at which an individual or groups piece of the Truth can be replaced by their piece of the Lie makes the individual or shared role of Leader misleading enough in its connotations for me to think it unnecessary most of the time.

Three Old songs from my days in the San Francisco. Bay area (almost 20 years ago when I was very into Jung).  The Picture above is of Jungs place in Bollengin in Switzerland. The  Linz  Cafe is the name of a book and building by Christopher Alexander which was built as a part of an "architectural museum exibit", temporarily built on the Linz river in Austria,and  which I chose as the scene of the imaginary party...I-P

The Linz Cafe (a waltze)

Carl Gustav Jung, Elizabeth Cotten
talking of Dreams by the Door
while Father Divine, and Ometeotle
drink pulque and sit on the floor
and young Maya Deren was dancing for Messrs.
Arp and Cesaire by the stairs
with Black Elk on drums
and Ornette on tenor
Who wouldn't have wanted to be there?

But after they all have gone away
faded right into the blue Dear.
when I think of The Linz Cafe,
I will remember you, Dear
sitting alone
in one of the Alcoves
of my mind...

Mr. Fukuokua was laughing for nothing
Credo Mutwa and I played along
while Dylan, and Spengler, Arno Gruen and Charo
were singing a Leadbelly song
and the wooden walls rang
and the tarpalin fluttered
and the afternoon drank itself blind
till the Lord of the Dawn
kissed His sister and muttered
"do ya know 'Jesus is on the Mainline'?"

So long ago and far away
nothing was ever so true Dear
But when I think of the Linz Cafe
I'll still remember you Dear
Walking along
under the trellises
of my love....

Frying Pan
(a rock and roll song)

Once I thought I knew a lady
She was swank and Fine..
I was down and out and lonely
And She was right on time..

Well I thought I'd found a saviour
When she took hold of my hand
But she just helped me out the fire
To put me  in the fryin’ pan

Chorus: fryin’ pan, fryin’ pan

Now someones stayin’ at a shelter
Tryin’ to get themselfves straight
Tryin’ to get some motivation
Before it gets too late

Well I guess they’re tryin’ to help 'm
But he sure hopes they understand:
Don’t Make no sense to Leave the fire
To Go back in the the Fryin’ pan

Chorus

Bridge:

Well just like the Dealer needs the Citizen
You know the fire needs the fryin’ pan
And just like repression needs wild desire
You understand the fryin’ pan needs…the fire…

Well now they’re on the street in Berkely
Tryin’ to make it pay
You see them struttin’ down San Pablo
Every single day;

They see the world goin’ to blazes
Just as fast as it can…
And not much difference ‘tween the fire
And the fryin’ pan…

Sung for Jung
(sung to a hopefully elegant little piano melody)

Somewhere in Switzerland a tower does stand
Made by a man, made with his hands
Where God and the Devil dine stately and grand
Stately and Grand and touching hands
And touching hands…

Some say war is the father of everything Great
And point as Switzerland and peacetime’s estate
Saying “What out of Switzerland of consequence has come?”
Well I must answer them “Carl Gustav Jung”
“Carl Gustav Jung…”