Why lives matter and whether some may matter more than others

Recently, I was pointed to a fascinating article in the New Yorker and, believe it or not, it got me thinking. And even now, I'm still exploring those thoughts which I thought I'd share, at least in part, because I keep seeing things that I'm thinking about popping up as issues in other contexts that keep firing that thinking even more.

One of the key themes in the article, approached aesthetically and from the art side of life (a blog on its own, so let me leave it at that for now), was race, which is, in fact, the very first word in the title. And it was here that I had to stop and ask myself, what can this be about, since we know, biologically, scientifically, with all the power and authority of the scientific community, that race simply doesn't exist. The only proper use of the term is in the phrase "human race", everything else is simply a distortion of reality. But here was this insightful and thought-provoking article nevertheless. It was also about art, and among all the other questions it raised (which is, in my not-so-humble-opinion is what good articles should do much more than shower one with mere information), was is there such a thing as "Black Art", which obviously there is, but what is it if it isn't racial? In other words, how was I to understand what the author was trying to say? And here are my first thoughts:

As I noted who knows how many times in my posts so far, whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not, the way people think (and I'm using the term very loosely here) hasn't always been the way people think. My friends Jean Gebser, in his Ever-present Origin, and William Irwin Thompson, in his The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light or Coming into Being, have made this case much more convincingly and poignantly than I have, but it boils down to this:

Each of us gets thrown (to use a Heideggerian term) into this world at some place at some time through no fault (or influence of our own). Thereafter, everything that happens to us, everything we do, how and what we learn, what we like or dislike, is experience. It turns out the Germans have two different words that we, in English, describe with just this one. namely Erlebnis and Erfahrung. The Gebser translators Barstad/Mikunas dealt with this issue by translating the former as "vital experience" and the latter as "lived (or undergone) experience". For example, "That roller coaster ride was quite the experience" (Erlebnis) in contrast with "Spending two years abroad was quite the experience" (Erfahrung). The differences in meaning are subtle, to be sure, but relevant. We intuit that the former is somehow "deeper" or not as readily accessible to our waking consciousness, which becomes clear the moment someone asks us to explain each of these in more detail. With the roller coaster we often end up saying something like "Ahh, you had to have been there, what a ride!" Yet in the latter case, we find ourselves telling anecdote, or stories, about things that happened while abroad. Someone who's never ridden a roller coaster may have trouble with the first kind of experience; those who have will relate it to their own, and in the latter case, depending upon the skill of the teller, the stories may make more lasting or fleeting impressions upon us.

Now, for as mundane as this may sound, I do think, in light of what Gebser, and Thompson, and others, are saying, we can start to understand how different realities may arise within the one overall framework we have called everyday life. In the course of human history, these modes of perception and mentation have been practiced, ingrained and passed on to succeeding generations. This might be the love or fear of roller coasters, or it might be the openness or closedness to other ways of slicing the reality pie. Once, these were shared among all humans, but over time, the group grew, split, wandered off, and became isolated from the others, but the underlying process remained the same. Over the millennia, the primary vital experiences were (most likely unconsciously) collected and collated into what came to be regarded as ethnic and later cultural constructs. Hence, we can see that while at the deepest levels of our psyches there are things (Jung would call them archetypes) that we share, but at less deep levels, shared experiences are more particular to a given group of indivduals who are in this way still very much connected to one another.

Anyone familiar with even the general run of history knows that particular groups of human beings, at any given time, have held any number of ideas, many of which seem odd, or even ignorant, to us today: a flat earth, a geocentric universe, the superiority of one's own group compared to all others, and for a whole slough of crazy reasons, "race". It was easy enough, especially at the superficial level at which most humans most often operate to simply split off "others" based on physical characteristics, such as skin color and hair texture, or more abstract, sometimes arbitrary, notions such as technological progress, "advancement", or culture (whatever it might have been defined as). These "seemed" to work, but as is so often the case when humans are involved, there were lots of negative side effects: oppression, exploitation, colonization, genocide, and more, all based on notions that in the meantime have turned out to be false. In other words, experience comes from within and is definitely imposed from without. Knowing this, we should simply flip over a mental switch or two and we move forward with our new knowledge. But we all know it's not as simple as that.

As a result of all our own individual and collective experiences that we have made using these false notions, we find it difficult to get out of the corner into which we painted ourselves. Once silly statements by not-so-bright demogogues (like Trump) now appear downright ludicrous and maliciously ignorant. Prejudices of all types reveal themselves clearly for what they are: unfounded judgements based on false knowledge. And this brings us back to our starting point:

As I said earlier, each of us suddenly shows up in this world at some place at some time through no fault (or influence of our own). Thereafter, everything that happens to us, everything we do, how and what we learn, what we like or dislike, is experience. But, this experience is both individual and collective as we have seen, and it is highly determined by the surroundings in which it takes place, whole history of experience that has been passed down through the group over the years and every experience that has been imposed upon any group that sees itself cohering for whatever reason. What is more, the "group" may change as well. Our forebears knew no countries (that is, nation-states), but for some reason we place a lot of value on them today. We have DNA strains in our bodies that come from the widest of sources and these combinations are -- how could it be otherwise -- different from our next-door neighbors' and most of us have no idea what they do or might mean. In other words, within a given general cultural grouping there are myriad subgroupings that mix, match, overlap, reciprocally influence, and differentiate themselves from one another. Each of these is legitimate in and of itself and how viable it is for how long is determined by the coherency and consistency of the experiences in which it is rooted.

It is easy to consider the world at a very superficial level ... for example, a country, like the United States ... and think that everyone there shares every national and cultural value in common, but this would be an obvious mistake, for it ignores everything that makes any one of us who he or she is. Within the United States (and we could take any country or region anywhere in the world and show the same processes at work), there are subgroups, ethnicities, subcultures that are very determining and stable entities which we can understand even without such faulty notions such as race. But for the longest time, race was a big card and it wss played hard there: Blacks in the USA were practically the last historically to be freed from slavery; the Emancipation Proclamation was fought politically and socially; Jim Crow ruled the roost for over a century; in my own childhood, separate facilities for "Colored" were commonplace; Brown v. the Board of Education caused more problems than it solved; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was even recently gutted; so it is apparent that for whatever reasons, at least those considered black had anything but equal rights, equal treatment in the eyes of the law and certainly not in neighborhoods with which I was familiar. Unfortunately, we all know that the those mental switches haven't been flipped and some may even be rusted in place. So even if we now know there's no such thing as race, it doesn't undo the lived and undergone experience of a significant portion of a familiar population. Saying there's not a problem doesn't mean there isn't a problem, it only means you are not willing to admit there may still be a problem after all.

Getting passed race, for example -- if what I'm thinking is on track -- means taking the vital and lived experience of others into consideration when dealing with them. We all share some things in common (deepest-level human experience), what we don't share in common (so-called "black" experience as compared to, let us say "red" or "yellow" or "white" experience) is common by nature: They're experiences and we can know that experience is what forms and determines who we are, hence we have a personally accessible way of understanding that a person has both vital and lived experiences and a whole history of experiences related to whichever groupings s/he may belong to. The process is the same even if the end-results are different. In other words, if you haven't already, there are ways and legitimately sustainable ways to better understand what others might be going through.

Any serious readerr will tell you how enriching even vicarious experiences are, and we now have an experience model that can enhance the one they were using all along. It's up to you, in the end. And I'm going to be more than interested in hearing what true racists are going to be saying once they find out there card has been trumped. (And you can decide if that pun was intended or not).

What about February's not to love

February's longer than usual this year. OK, OK ... it's longer than usual every four years. But, in my mind, leap years are nothing special: they're just a way to organize our precious calanders so that the appear to function. The sun revolves around the earth as it always has and how we mark those revolutions has changed throughout the millennia, but who cares about that? Certainly not many people I know. Hell, most people don't know why we count time the way we do, or how we decide what the "correct" time is (as if there were such a thing), or why Christmas is celebrated when it is (and I'm talking to my holier-than-thou Christian readers) or why we celebrate New Year's when we do, but all of that doesn't matter to the everyday, trying-to-keep-my-head-above-water workaholic that most of us have become.

Let's be honest, regardless of our alleged religious beliefs, we spend a whole lot of time just muddling through, trying to ensure we can pay the bills, and, if all goes well, have a bit or relaxation in-between. Let me let you in on a little secret: that's mere existence, it has nothing to do with living at all.

But, be that as it may ... in just a few days, the "Mad Season" will end. Of what do I speak? Allow me a little pointer toward another way to mark the days:

Way back in November, when Anglophones were pretending to care about those who died to bring us the freedom we never had, a simultaneous, mostly-unknown-outside-Germany event took place, but one much more to my liking: on the 11th day of the 11th month, at 11 minutes after the 11th hour, Karneval (as it's known in the Cologne region) or Fasching (as it's known most other places) begins. It runs from 11 November though Ash Wednesday, culminating of course on Rose Monday (the Monday before Ash Wednesday). Fasching is the season of fools, jesters, and all the critical insight that goes with them. (If you don't believe that fools are wise, read a couple of Shakespeare's tragedies, or do a bit of googling on "Till Eulenspiegel".) As for the States, it's called Mardi Gras, but unless you're from New Orleans, you probably don't know much about it anyway.

Though I'm not a big Fasching celebrator myself (it's much more popular in Catholic regions, since Ash Wednesday is a big day for Catholics, but not for Protestants), I'm glad it's still celebrated -- in all senses of the word -- here. There's a lot of silliness, and revelry, good, biting political cabaret, and music, and parades, and costumes, and the driving off of evil spirits, and things blatantly pagan masquerading within the bounds of good old Church tradition. We Americans, in particular, with our predilection to all things Puritanical and Calvinist miss out on all the fun. We like to think of ourselves a free spirits, but until you've been to Cologne on Rose Monday, you really don't know what you're talking about.

Of course, this year it will be different, but elucidating the reasons would detract from all the fun, and wouldn't most of us just prefer to have fun, regardless of what else is going on around us?

Reflections of an optimistic cynic

This isn't the first time I've been torn between what I experience and what I want to be true. We all go through phases like this I'm sure. But, it's getting increasingly difficult to keep my spirits up these days. There's simply too much inanity and too much insanity to have to contend with. And while I want to believe that somewhere, perhaps behind the scenes, certainly unbeknownst to me, there are people succeeding in making their world a better place, it also feels like they're getting harder and harder to find.

What's even worse, and as a life-long student of language most distressing, is how we've allowed our language to be commandeered by newspeakers, marketeers, and propagandists. We are subjected, day in and day out, to an unending harrangue of false truths (we're-the-good-guys-they're-the-bad-guys), conscious bias and prejudice (if-you've-seen-one-Muslim-you've-seen-a-terrorist), over-the-top hyperbole (I-could-shoot-people-and-not-lose-votes), unmitigated aggression (#black-lives-matter), calls to violence (carpet-bomb-the-Middle-East), and bald-faced "justifications" of corruption, greed and oppression (Citizens United). Along with those 5,000 ads we're subjected to every day, we have this ceaseless stream of reality distortions against which can hardly defend ourselves.

One the one hand, I can understand why nothing happens. People are cowards by choice or through resignation, people are afraid for we're repeatedly shown what will happen if you step out of line, too many people have just enough that they can be made to fear those who have less. We can always find scapegoats and if we can't find them ourselves, there are more than enough interest groups to give you comprehensive list to chose from.

And we fall for it every time.

One of my favorite cultural philosophers Jean Geber wrote, "Every reform is a mere attempt at resuscitation." He was right. You can only resuscitate someone (or something) that's dead. And most of what we hold dear is dead: our money system, our banking system, our economic systems, our political systems, our education systems, our social systems ... dead or dying before our eyes. They're being hijacked, kidnapped and murdered before our very eyes. A stacked deck, a rigged game, a grand illusion, a con; deception, deviance, distortion, dishonesty, all in the name of the good, the better, the just, the humane, the compassionate, the fair, and what's right.

Sure, I would like to think that things will improve, but they can't under the current conditions. I would like to think that humanity will come together and realize that they have much more in common than what separates us, but they won't as long as we can be so easily set against one another as we are. I would like to think that change could come without all the pain and suffering that most great changes in history have brought with them, but it's getting more and more difficult to hope otherwise.

Maybe it's time to just let it all collapse. Maybe we are headed into a new dark age. Maybe we simply haven't got the smarts or the will or the desire or the wherewithal to save ourselves from all the suffering. If we don't, then we don't deserve to not suffer. If we do, then maybe we should start doing something to embrace the change that will come.

A touch of magic

We love to think that we live in a rational world, one governed by reason, rules and good old common sense. Sometimes we do. Most of the time we don't. Over the millennia of human existence, there are some things that have changed very little.

I was reminded of this recently by a very banal, and, for me, uninteresting event which got more attention than I thought it deserved on my Facebook page. Apparently, a good number of people were very upset by the fact that a Cincinnati Bengals linebacker took a cheap and dangerous shot at a Steelers receiver. I watched the video, of course, the hit was unnecessary and excessive, and many fans were calling for punishment for the alleged offender. [Disclaimer: The reactions showed up on my timeline because I'm originally from Steeler country, so many of friends are still there or still root for the old home team. I'll admit: I don't, I don't care, and at this point in my life, even though I played it myself in my youth (practically a necessity for acceptance), I think American football is way past its prime and should be retired, but that's another story.] And, what I have to say has little to do with this particular sport -- it is truly just the catalyst -- but rather with who we are as human beings.

For all our crying out for freedom and individuality, we're still social creatures: we want to belong, somewhere, to some kind of group, either well-constituted, like a family, or even more amorphous like sports-clubs' fans. It's easiest to see in the US where sports have become an actual fetish. Sporting events are always clothed in drama, in excitement, from marching bands (everybody in lockstep) with lots of brass (battle horns) and drums (oh yeah, lots of drums), the teams' colors, painted faces (warpaint?), slogans, hymns, and symbols (the Steelers' "Terrible Towel" springs immediately to mind). There's lot of yelling, screaming, cheering, booing, singing, and wailing. It's for good reason that the word "fan" is merely a shortened form of the word "fanatic".

The marketing of these events, gladitorial in nature, in which winning is not nearly enough ... you have to defeat, stomp, crush, slaughter, obliterate, or annihilate your opponent. "Prepare for war" was one of the viral memes for the very game that became the focus of attention. And if all's fair in (love and) war, why would there be any concern for someone pushing the rules? Politically, it's acceptable, for example, as politics are often run very much like sporting events: we rally to the colors, sing the songs and hymns, blow the horns, beat the drums and set off to do the same to our enemies; it's funny how sports are considered harmless, even though they aren't, and the wars are known to be harmful, but they're treated as if they aren't.

In either case, there's a touch of magic about being in the stadium and going with the flow and the crowd, but when something bad happens, are we then individually no longer responsible. We fired our team on, we distort and disfigure ourselves to belong to the group, but then? From ancient cultures through the great empires and down to the present day, some things just haven't changed very much. We get caught up in the feeling of the moment, the rush of excitement, and we lose sight of the fact that what was once a haven for us isolated souls has become a hell for those who are not us.

Yes, it can happen anywhere.

Different strokes ...

There was a time when the world was full of magic. There were nymphs and sprites, gnomes and dwarves, wizards and witches, and an array of both positive and negative forces that determined much of our lives. Almost all of us experience the world this way when we are children, for our environment is full of wonder and terror and protection and amazement.

Because of the association with childhood, this way of thinking is most often belittled by us moderns, but unjustifiably so. My favorite example of it, however, is in the film, "The Gods Must Be Crazy". While flying over the Kalahari, a pilot simply throws his Coke bottle out the window of his plane and it is found by Xi, a local bushman. Like everything else around them, the tribe first believes it to be another gift from the gods. It is the hardest things they have ever experienced, and it brings an unhappy, even destructive, dynamic into their lives. They agree that the gods must have made a mistake and the "evil thing", as they have come to call it, must go, so Xi declares he will take it to the end of the world and throw it off. The rest of the movie depicts all of his experiences with the modern world along the way. While the decision and the solution may appear child-like, Xi is anything but a child. He is a respected member of the tribe; he provides and cares for his family; he is willing to travel into the unknown to protect everyone from the evil influences of this "thing"; and, as is seen throughout the rest of the movie, he is a clever, resourceful, highly-skilled problem-solver. No, this is a loving, caring, responsible adult who just happens to understand the world very differently than those he encounters along the way.

The gods in Xi's world are capable of carelessness. They aren't particularly powerful even if they are caring for the tribe. Over time, however, the powers attributed to the gods increase in strength and become more formalized and find new expressions. These may be seen in the exquisite paintings found in the Lascaux Caves in Southern France, dating back some 40,000 years, or in the highly refined and intricately developed cosmology of the Ancient Egyptians. The pantheon of gods expands, and each god is in command of a particular force or power or controls some clearly defined aspect of life and nature. Whereas art and writing are unknown in Xi's Magical world, both of these methods of expression become dominant factors in the Mythical world. Of course, we moderns like to belittle this type of thinking as well. We find it these days in the adolescent love of superheroes, sports legends, our reverence for our "alma mater", be it high school or college (though in these latter instances it is not only tolerated but encouraged, oddly enough).

Two points are worth noting here. First, neither of these modes are childish ways of thinking. Xi demonstrates this clearly for the Magical structure, and the great empires of the past -- the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans -- were all products of the Mythical structure of consciousness. Second, in both cases, we can find examples of such consciousness in our everyday, modern lives. They are not dead and forgotten, they have not be discarded, rather they have been maintained, cultivated and adapted to play important roles in our lives.

Our modern problem is, to a great extent, that we fail to recognize them and put them off, but, as I believe, much to our own peril.

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

The Magic structure of consciousness

Continuing our survey of Gebser's structures of consciousness, we start into that stage of which we do have some evidence. From now on, it should be easier to find support for the claims Gebser makes.

At some unspecified time far back in our past, a change took place. Humanity entered into a second phase of development and gained a new structure of consciousness, the Magical structure. This structure is characterized by five primary characteristics:

1. its egolessness,
2. its spacelessness and timelessness,
3. its pointlike-unitary world,
4. its interweaving with nature, and
5. its magical reaction to the world. (Feuerstein, 1987, p61) 

A rudimentary self-sense was emerging and language is the real product of this change. Words as vehicles of power are typical of this time and structure; incantations as precursors to prayer emerged. Consciousness, in this phase, is characterized by man's intimate association with nature.

This is perhaps the most notable characteristic regarding this structure. Humans, at this time, do not really distinguish themselves apart from nature. Theye are a part of all that surrounds them; in the earliest stages it is hard to conceive that they views themselves apart from their environment. The plants, animals and other elements of his surroundings share the same fate as they do; they experience in a similar manner. Latency is still dominant; little is transparent. Magic we can define in agreement with Gustav Meyrink as doing without knowing (p426), and it is magic man who is engaged in this activity in all aspects of his existence. The hunting and gathering, the quest for survival are all activities that consume most of humanity's waking hours. But in the quiet of the evening around the fire; there is time for reflection of sorts. The activities of the day were codified (in speech) and recounted. Memory was collective, tribal, and all things were shared and experienced by all. The "I" is not a factor; the "we" is dominant.

This is a one-dimensional, pre-perspectival, point-like existence that occurs in a dream- like state. Unlike the dreamlessness of the previous structure, a recognition is developing in humanity that they are something different from that around them. Not fully awake to who they is or what their role in the world is, the individual is beginning to recognize his self as an entity. The forms of expression for this structure can be found in the art and other artifacts that have been recovered from this time. Graven images and idols are what first come to mind. However, ritual should also be considered here, for it is in the specific and directed execution of certain actions and gestures that conveys much about this consciousness structure. Feuerstein feels that this structure persisted till around 40,000 BC and the advent of the Cro-Magnons.

Another feature of this structure that we should bring to mind is its spacelessness and timelessness. The idea that space and time are illusions derives from this stage in our development as human beings. The fact that this is one of the first lessons one learns when embarking upon the esoteric path is further evidence of this idea. To Magic Man, closely linked as he is with others of like mind, space and time need not concern him. In fact, I am not convinced that he would understand them anyway, for there is no need that he do so. Magic, however, is very much alive today, and it comes as no surprise (nor should it be) that there is such a strong interest in magic today. It seems that the fast growing branches of occult study seem to be Wicca (overlayed as it is with feminism) and similar earth magic(k) studies. What is more, it is the most vital and emotional of all structures. We live in very decisive times, potentially catastrophic times. This is a time when emotion rises near the surface of our consciousness and it is here that magic manifests itself. The proliferation of stories and films dealing with Voodoo and similar matters (e.g. The Serpent and the Rainbow) further substantiate our claim. Yet, this is not the only structure that seems to be making a comeback these days.

Old and new mix together in this structure quite easily, be it "spelling" in English, or suduko, or the World Cup, just to name a couple things that immediately spring to mind. As was said before, and will certainly come up again, each and all of the structures of consciousness that Gebser describes are an integral part of who we are. Some of these are more fully in our awareness at times, whereas we most often see the world mental/rationally (which we will come to later). The next time, however, we'll move a step closer and consider the Mythical structure of consciousness

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)

Meyrink, G. (n.d.) Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, Bremen, Schuenemann, p. 426, as quoted in EPO, p60