#500

It's really hard to believe. After more than a quarter million words, I've come to my 500th post. If I were a champagne drinker, I supposed I'd be popping corks.

Blogs aren't all I write, but blogging does take up a good portion of my time. I've poured a lot of words into academic containers, I can assure you, for it seems that higher education is unthinkable without text. What I learned over there was that we have established a lot of fact, we have described a lot of phenomena, and we know one helluva lot these days. But what I've realized that in spite of all that, we're really not all that smarter -- as a species, that is -- and we're certainly not any wiser for it.

Writing aficionados will tell you that you need to write a million words. Well, just over five years, just over 250,000 words ... you can do the math. Who's says I'll even live long enough to know whether I found it or not. At least in the blogging world, that is. But, maybe it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

Yes, the 500th blog post. There was a time when numbers were thought to mean something. (Oh, we still think that they do in some areas: like business where as long as the last one is bigger than the previous one we think we should be happy; or if you're the millionth customer somewhere. Funny: the bigger the number the better, but it hasn't always been so. There was a time when small was beautiful: one world; a happily married couple; for Christians, the Trinity; the four corners of the earth; the seven wonders of the world ... OK, so some numbers were left out. We moderns all know that was all meaningless nonsense anyway.No, I'm not going to make a case that gematria or number mysticism is "true", but it is a way to get off dead center and maybe see things in a slightly different light.

Take the number 5, for example. Traditionally, this was the number of change. After all, it was at the midway point between 0 and 9. The mystic Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin thought it was an evil number, and I suppose it is, if change isn't one of your favorite things. And 500? Well, that's two orders of magnitude greater (5*10= 50, or one order of magnitude; 50*10=500, the second order). If one order of magnitude is a kicker (for example, four may be a foundation, but think of 40 years in the desert, or 40 days of fasting, or 40 days of rain ... those familiar Bible texts start to look a bit different, I must say), then what's two? If 10-times is a spiritualization, then 100-times starts looking cosmic. Right. And that's kind of how I feel right now?

Stated somewhat differently, it would appear that my 500th blog post should mark some kind of fundamental change. And maybe that's where I am. To be perfectly honest, in all that I have written here over the past five-plus years, I've done everything I could to be clear but civil, to be controversial but considerate. And now, perhaps, it's time for a change. Why not?

It would seem, dear Reader, that now is simply a propitious opportunity to vary the presentation, to alter the approach, to step up to the plate, to ... well, you get the point. But, perhaps it's time to simply up the intensity. Now, that's a thought ...

A blast from the past

Allow me to shift gears, ever so slightly.

There is one aspect of blogging that simply fascinates me: what gets read the most. In my own humble case, it is a post from just over four years ago about -- are you ready? -- "The Archaic structure of consciousness". Yes, you read that correctly ... how obscure is that? Not only is this the most viewed entry at Diaphainon, it has been viewed twice as often as the next closest entry. It's not only at the top of the list, it is far, far ahead of the pack. I can't help but wonder why.

The post is a brief summary of (Jean) Gebser's (1986) description of the earliest consciousness structure in his model of consciousness unfoldment (cf. EPO). Put most succinctly, what goes on in our human heads hasn't always been the same. At different points in our history, major shifts in how we perceive, see, and comprehend the world around us have occurred (Gebser calls them "mutations" to emphasize the differentness from one structure to the next.) Archaic consciousness is hardly consciousness at all. Feuerstein (1987) describes it as "a dimly lit mist devoid of shadows" (p57). In this structure, it was this dawning of awareness that put us on the path to becoming human. Yes, this is a tough notion to grasp, I agree. And you will probably agree as well that this isn't the first topic that would be on most people's what's-that-all-about agendas.

Personally, I like to think that this high number of page views is due to college professors touching upon Gebser's model and throwing their classes into confusion, whereupon they go home and google the subject to see if they can find out more. If my guess is correct, I sincerely hope they find my brief summary helpful.

Irrespective of the reason for this post's popularity, it is worthwhile to remember, to recognize, that what goes on in our modern heads is not what has always gone on inside people's heads. What has gone on and how significant these changes have been over time cannot be overemphasized. The difference that obligates, of which I've written in the last three posts, can be traced back directly to the emergence of this rather obscure, hard-to-grasp structure of consciousness.

In the next post or two, I will try to make clearer what this means.

References
Feuerstein, G. (1987) Structures of consciousness: The genius of Jean Gebser - An introduction and critique, Lower Lake/CA, Integral Publishing.

Gebser, J. (1986) The Ever-present Origin, Authorized translation by Noel Barstad with Algis Mikunas, Athens/OH, Ohio University Press [originally published 1949]. (EPO)

Why do I do this?

Recently, at a conference I was attending, someone asked me why I blogged. They didn't really see the point of it all. "Isn't this simply the satisfaction of some narcisstic need?", she asked. Well, I decided to tell you what I told her.

There are lots of reasons why people blog. They range from mere getting attention, to feeling important, to exposing injustice to ... well, the list is actually endless. There are millions of bloggers and there are millions of reasons for blogging. Mine, I like to think, are anything but grandiose. In fact, I believe they are really humble. And there are five (just a handful) of them:

1. It is my firm belief that there is not enough thinking going on the world. I'm not talking about mere mental processes, I'm talking about serious, deep engagement with things that matter, like what it means to be human, what role do we play in our own lives, why are there so many "problems" in the world, and why such a beautiful place as our Earth is being wantonly destroyed before our eyes.
2. William James once said, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." I couldn't agree with him more, and I don't think that such "thinking" is to our collective advantage. It is used for personal advantage, to be sure, but selfishness isn't a human characteristic that need be writ large.
3. All of us are in the same boat together. It's called Reality. It's not an easy thing to deal with. We can use all the help we can get. There is only so much we can know, but there is an infinite amount of what we think we know. That's not always helpful. The more reasonably we can agree can make a huge difference in how things play out.
4. We humans have a pivotal, if not central, role in what we call Creation or Nature or The World ... it doesn't matter what we call it. None of us chose to be here, but we're here nevertheless ... all of us. We, whether we like it or not, have more to say about how things play out than any other species on the planet, and I think it's about time we start living up to our potential.
5. In the end, it is up to us -- all of us -- whether my and your children and grandchildren live in a world worth living in. This is not an exaggeration, it is a fact. We humans have been blessed (cursed?) with the notion of responsibility. It's time for us to 'fess up.

In other words, at heart, I blog because I want people to stop, reflect on what they are thinking, and if possible, rethink what needs rethinking, not just for themselves, but for all our sakes'. Yes, that's a pretty big charge, I know.

Life's not simple, and it's surely not easy, but it's not complicated either, at least if we don't make it so. It is, however, manageable, if we go about it with a clear head. We are faced with innumerable challenges and choices every day, and we can really only make headway if we acknowledge this and do something about it. But, whatever we do, we should have thought about it first.

What you think is not nearly as important as the fact that you have thought about it. Opinions, as it is said, should be the result of thinking, not a substitute for it.