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.

It's all about perspective, or is it?

One of the most insightful, sometimes biting, and, unfortunately, too short-lived TV series ever produced was Father Ted. Those of you on the left shore of the Atlantic may not have ever heard of it, but it was, one of the few TV shows I have been willing to sit down and watch. I don't mention this because I want to plug the show, but because there was a scene in one of them that smacked me upside the head the first time I saw it and which has left a ringing in my ears ever since. Yes, sometimes, in the least likely of places, you can find just the key you need to open the door to a new world. And, thanks to the wonders of the internet, of course, I can share it with you (... and the important part comes after the tea kettle).

It's all about perspective, isn't it? But the real question that comes to my mind is, "How many of us are Dougals (that would be the young priest in the scene)?

You can scoff. Go right ahead. You can think I couldn't possibly be talking to you, but just how sure are you? After all, we love perspectives as postmodern denizens of Spaceship Earth. We live from perspectives. We thrive on perspectives. We live and move and find our being in perspective. Am I exaggerating? I don't think so.

Just what is "perspective"? Well, it's a way of looking at things, it's a particular way of looking at something, it's looking at something from a particular point of view; that is, it's a way of looking at something that depends rather essentially on the person doing the looking and the particular point from which the looking is taking place. If I'm looking at an elephant, let us say, from the front, then one of the most striking features I see is its trunk. If you are looking at the same elephant from the rear, well, then you have to decide whether it is the tail, what it hides, or whatever that is most prominent in your view of things. Having a particular take on a particular view that is particular to you has very much in common with what we call "opinions". And therein lies the rub, as Billy Quiverlance would say. When you get right down to it, perspectives are pretty much just opinions.

Now, for all of you who think I'm equating your way of looking at the world with looking at an elephant's butt, let me add that there is nothing wrong with opinions in and of themselves; not any more that there's anything wrong with looking at an elephant from the back or any other point of view. Opinions should be the result of thought, not a substitute for thought, but I do think you'll agree that there are far too many opinions that we are exposed to these days that have more in common with Dougal's comprehension of the world than Father Ted's. Yes, Bill, you are quite correct, the rub is beginning to chafe.

What most of us don't know, however, is that having a particular view of (any)thing(s) and knowing that it's our particular view is a rather new phenomenon in the evolution of the world. Oh sure, we all take it for granted, but it's really only something that we humans have been wrestling with for about the last 500 years. In geological or evolutional or even historical terms, that's not long ago at all.

It doesn't surprise me that Dougal hasn't fully come to terms with what perspective means. By the same token, it doesn't surprise me at all that most people don't deal with perspectives, and certainly not with opinions, very well. My problem is that in contrast to the show, where Dougal is rather quiet and reserved, today's Dougals are the ones making the most noise.

The rational reduction

Growing up, the TV was black-and-white and full of Westerns. It was easy to tell who was who, for the good guys wore white hats and bad guys black ones. It has taken me years to get over it.

As we saw last time, with the introduction of perspective, points-of-view became the way to see and understand the world. More than one is possible, of course, so the question immediately arises as to which perspective, which point-of-view is the right one. We quickly moved from a simple what-is to what-is-right. A reasonable person will tell you that it depends: when seen one way, thus-and-so is right; when seen another way, something else is right. Our sensibilities regarding right and wrong, however, don't like to deal with more than one "right". Something is right, or it is not. In other words, we developed a whole way of thinking based on what is right. The good guys, in the white hats were right; the guys in the black hats were wrong, and a whole lot of effort was put into making sure we youngsters understood the message. Like I said, it's taken me years to get over it.

The competition between competing points-of-view leads rather quickly to relativity. Everything becomes relative, it depends on how you look at it, and in the end, it means that any point-of-view is as good as any other point-of-view, one opinion is as good as any other. But this is intellectually and emotionally unsatisfactory, we feel deeply uncomforatble. We long for clarity, for surety, for certainty.

And here came the cavalry or the posse to the rescue. It was all very clear: the good guys were right because they could draw faster and shoot straighter; they were stronger and better fighters; they overwhelmed the dark forces with strength, intelligence and, well, violence. Might made right. Apart from all the possible color associations that one can spin off of this, it was by power and sheer force that right was established. And in all this sorting of the wheat from the chaff, of the good from the bad, of the right from the wrong, we added an even more insidious degree of certainty ... at least those of us who were still in doubt. It was not simply a matter of either/or, either you're right or you're wrong, no, it became a matter of you're either with us or you're against us.

Not only was this thinking approach taken to an insane degree in recent American political history, what we find quite prevalent this days is the thinking that if you don't agree with the right point-of-view, you automatically subscribe to its opposite: if you are for the Palestinians, you are against the Israelis; if you are for gun control, you are against guns; if you are against the death penalty, you are for allowing violent criminals to roam the streets; if you are against GMO foods, you are an organic tree-hugger; if you are against casino capitalism, you must be a communist. Yes, it has come to this. And this type of thinking, this type of argumentation, which is way too prevalent these days, is dangerous, for it carries within itself its own seeds of destruction; it is by nature destructive thinking. It is this allegedly "rational" thinking that allows for the clearly irrational behavior we witness all around us: the destruction of the environment in the name of profit; the perpetuation of war and oppression in the name of freedom; the ... well, I'm sure by now you get the picture.

Our rationality is at an end. The rational reduction that I have experienced throughout my own lifetime has become, well, irrational.

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)

Putting one's mental house in order

As anyone who has ever encountered mythology, say, in school, knows, it's impossible to keep all those gods and goddesses sorted out: who's responsible for what, who did what to whom, how does all of it fit together? This was the case two-and-a-half thousand years ago, as well, and the first people to try and do something about it were the Greeks. Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid, Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many others set about putting our mental house in order. Fact, reason, logic, argument, demonstration, proof became the hallmarks of a clear mind and an acute understanding of the world around us. It was at this time, more or less, when the mutation to what Gebser calls the Mental structure of consciousness occurred.

For a millennium or more, humanity experienced, literally, heady times. Great systems of thought were attempted. Everything that could be measured was and things were described, categorized, classified, systematized, defined and ordered. The foundations of modern science were laid. With the fall of Rome, of course, we entered the Dark Ages; that is, a time during which we took a long break from all this, but we slowly but surely recovered. Around the first millennium AD, we really moved into high gear and in many ways made up for lost time. Universities and other institutions of higher learning were founded; study became more systematic, and thinking became more secular. And then a small shift occurred.

This is best experienced by looking a paintings and illustrations from the Middle Ages, for example, and comparing them to visual art produced around and after the Renaissance. What do we find? Perspective. Yes, the perceiving of something from a particular, identifiable vantage point, a point of view, if you will, and the rise of point-of-view thinking, which we all more or less take for granted these days, has brought about significant and far-reaching changes in our minds and how we understand the world.

In a manner of speaking, the world was mentally, conceptually divided into pieces. What was once a whole, which is how the Ancient Greeks saw the world, became a conglomerate of competing viewpoints. Where once reason dominated, rational argumentation dominated. We should recall that the very word "rational" is derived from the ratio, which is, among other things, a division problem.

Just why this is problematic will be the subject or my next post.

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 Mental structure of consciousness

The next shift in consciousness took place between 10,000 B.C. and 500 B.C. This was the transition to the Mental structure of consciousness. It was at this time that humans, to use Gebser's image, stepped out of the mythical circle (two-dimensional) into three- dimensional space. Mythology had become so deficient (and it should be noted that each structure has its "efficient" as well as "deficient" form), that humankind needed a clean break with the past. The plethora of gods and contradictory stories of creation, formation of institutions, and so on threatened to overwhelm the consciousness of the individual; he practically stood on the verge of drowning in a deluge of mythological mentation. In reaction to this, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and of course, Pythagoras stepped forth to counteract this trend. The mental structure was inaugurated and this coincides with the "discovery" of "causality," Abstraction becomes a key word to describe mental activity and we find man using his mind to overcome and "master" the world around him. With abstraction comes philosophizing, hence the philosopheme is the primary form of expression. Monotheism almost universally replaces the plethora of gods of bygone days; dogma, in both allegory and creed, replaces the symbols of previous times; method replaces the mysteries as humanity develops an ever-increasing desire to penetrate, and, of course, master nature. This has given rise to the idea of science as the dominant religion of today. Also at this time, time itself was conceptualized (spatialized) as an "arrow" that points from the past to the future by way of the present (Feuerstein, 1987, p98).

About the time of the Renaissance, humanity came into its own and really mastered space. It was at this time that perspective was actually introduced into art. Since that time, perspective has come to be a major part and aspect of our mental functioning. Perspective is the life blood of reasoning and the Rational structure of consciousness, which Gebser considers to be only a deficient form of the Mental structure. What we have is the full development of the ego and its related centeredness. We conceive things, events and phenomena in terms of our own perspectives, often at the expense of others. The eye, it will be seen (and the last of the openings in the head), becomes the spiritual organ representative of this structure. Our language, our entire imagery and dominant metaphor takes on visual, spatial character. Space is finally overcome, in the true sense of the word. With the supercession of space, the person finally accomplishes his/her egoistic, individual separation from nature. In this concretization of the "I," we become very aware of our existence, of our beingness, of our individuality. And so it should be. But in a deficient mode, the outcomes, of course, are loneliness, isolation, and alienation, which are so characteristic of our own American culture. In fact, our current materialistic approach to understanding reality is perhaps the final stage of this structure. There is also much everyday evidence to indicate that we are moving through a great change at this time.

We should remember, however, that this is also the time of philosophy. The mental ordering and systematization of thought becomes the real dominant mode of expression. The myths have lost their vibrancy and existential connection to reality. Greek thought followed later by the Scholastics and finally the Enlightenment are all periods in which this particular structure of consciousness flourishes and strongly manifests. It is not without its opposition, of course, since any change will bring about the requisite opposition to its own development. By the time of the Renaissance, though, this structure had firmly established itself and was prepared to move into the next phase of its development. At this time, as was pointed out earlier, a very profound and significant event occurred: man incorporated space into his thought. We cannot underestimate, or overstate, the importance of this development. It is literally at this time that the world begins to shrink. The seeds of our one world community are planted at this time. The ripples begun during the magical structure are widening significantly: first spirit, then soul, now space have become constituents of man's consciousness. Three dimensions have been established and we are prepared for the next significant step we are taking now.

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)