A reply to an associate...
I'm getting your emails. I'm just deeply buried in New Job Changeover Syndrome. Alas, I haven't communicated much with my beloved family, other than Lisa, in weeks.
Regarding our non-profit group, the participants are older activists, and one retired Director of Administration from Bayer. Each grew too weary of essential social change initiatives breaking down before their promise was realized due to lack of attention to the group's process and failure to practice conflict as an art. Our process is: to be together regularly and tend to the way we relate. Sometimes we have felt more faithful to that than others. We seek ways to build the process arts as a field that recognizes itself as such so that it may take up its obligation to work overtly and collectively toward peace. We have engaged in projects when willing and able, and would like to support other people (with our 501c3 and existing finance tracking infrastructure) to do the same. We often struggle with identity issues because our available energy, pace, and needs vary widely, but I am most often proud of us for continuing in community (when it feels warm and close and even more when it doesn't) for as long as we have. Now it is ABC which provides my community building services to Aiki Extensions as their Executive Director.
I've also delayed my response because, especially over email, it may become difficult to really get to a place of deep exchange. I've been trying to figure out a way to explore that without either writing all day or exposing you to the vast and foggy terrain of my private online work area and dissertation writing (my "work in progress" wiki) which is afflicted with my baroque prose style and definitely not a quick read.
I suppose the dilemma (and fascination of learning from each other, should we decide to) is in what seems like it might be our primary point of departure - the kind of hope we practice. Getting at what I mean might take a minute and I hope you'll forgive me if my way of approach is a bit inaccessible. I'm working to refine that.
The legacy of the historical surge of monotheism (singular divinity and truth) is a kind of literalism that costumes itself as perfection. Perfectionism is not friendly to humanity and makes humanity unfriendly to itself and the soul of the world. This takes shape in the fantasy that absolute precision is possible and therefore absolute power in sufficient applied rationality. Absolutes of this kind have always belonged to divinity in the human experience. As a result, Science is imagined and followed religiously as revealing The Truth rather than supporting one method of inquiry, and the mechanistic metaphors of industrialism (efficiency, progress, development, etc.) comprise a new and overpowering fantasy of divinity, rather than an essential subcategory in a larger idea of meaning.
Psychology emerged alongside the global transition to industrial domination and is firmly shaped by the scientistic imagination of perfection (health) believed in by medical doctors who were its first practitioners. As psychology became ubiquitous in the 20th century its hypothetical and imaginative jargon ("obsessive-compulsive", "The Unconscious", "well-adjusted") was transformed into literalistic diagnoses as though they were proven facts and became everyday words. With these reductionistic explanations for the utterly mysterious firmly fixed as lenses in the frames of perception, contemporary people are almost entirely estranged from the making of meaning through sympathy for and understanding of story, soul, and sorrow. The mechanistic/medical fantasy of health continues to reform what began as "depth" psychology (and healing itself) such that learning how to live, suffer and celebrate the making of meaning, and then die well have fallen beneath the hooves of stampeding ego-psychology. "Progress" is now equivalent with Good and "Self Help" has become the ultimate aim.
I hope we will learn to prefer to cultivate sympathy and understanding for the vast realm of experience that the self cannot help, is painful, Other, and therefore rejected as illegitimate. It is what we refuse to consider deeply and end up denying that causes "failure of imagination" that precludes honest preparation for real suffering. This also leads to ineffective action that virtually abets painfully obvious stock villains bombing other people's children to gain control "essential to our national interests and security". The remedy for this I call "martial nonviolence" - that use of shared power that insists on practicing arts of peace, defined as conflict done well such that all participants in a given system get support to secure what every human needs and have repeated chances to get some of what they want as well.
In the industrial mind it is obligatory to expect to never be sick, never suffer from pain, fulfill all your dreams, and live to an endlessly postponed (more cryo-frozen and botoxic than ripe) old age, but that is not balanced and appropriate for being human. I hope to be sick and suffer legitimately but as briefly as possible, relate to my dreams as though they are invitations to an autonomous realm wherein my capacity for wonder and understanding may become more sophisticated, and live to an age at which I may be at least a bit excited at the prospect of dying well and meeting whatever might or might not come next.
I lost my child with no reason given in December of 2006. Holding my suddenly and inexplicably dead first-born in my arms removed all doubt about the fantasy that it is possible never to suffer. The experience did not damage me so that I cannot love life and adopt a darker view to match my inner loss. Rather, it stripped away a natural privilege of childhood - the illusion which insists on enthroning simplistic Hope for an endlessly sunny future in the legitimate place of powerlessness and sorrow. Hope, like all the other gods, is only a usurper when it insists it reigns alone.
Re-reading this it becomes clear that I have gone on too long and abstrusely, as I feared. I hope this finds you in a patient frame of mind and that you will forgive me my excesses.
Brandon
P.S. I haven't read the book you mention but would like hear what you think of it. If you'd like to read someone who says what I mean much more accessibly you might read Thomas Moore, or more precisely - James Hillman.
I'm getting your emails. I'm just deeply buried in New Job Changeover Syndrome. Alas, I haven't communicated much with my beloved family, other than Lisa, in weeks.
Regarding our non-profit group, the participants are older activists, and one retired Director of Administration from Bayer. Each grew too weary of essential social change initiatives breaking down before their promise was realized due to lack of attention to the group's process and failure to practice conflict as an art. Our process is: to be together regularly and tend to the way we relate. Sometimes we have felt more faithful to that than others. We seek ways to build the process arts as a field that recognizes itself as such so that it may take up its obligation to work overtly and collectively toward peace. We have engaged in projects when willing and able, and would like to support other people (with our 501c3 and existing finance tracking infrastructure) to do the same. We often struggle with identity issues because our available energy, pace, and needs vary widely, but I am most often proud of us for continuing in community (when it feels warm and close and even more when it doesn't) for as long as we have. Now it is ABC which provides my community building services to Aiki Extensions as their Executive Director.
I've also delayed my response because, especially over email, it may become difficult to really get to a place of deep exchange. I've been trying to figure out a way to explore that without either writing all day or exposing you to the vast and foggy terrain of my private online work area and dissertation writing (my "work in progress" wiki) which is afflicted with my baroque prose style and definitely not a quick read.
I suppose the dilemma (and fascination of learning from each other, should we decide to) is in what seems like it might be our primary point of departure - the kind of hope we practice. Getting at what I mean might take a minute and I hope you'll forgive me if my way of approach is a bit inaccessible. I'm working to refine that.
The legacy of the historical surge of monotheism (singular divinity and truth) is a kind of literalism that costumes itself as perfection. Perfectionism is not friendly to humanity and makes humanity unfriendly to itself and the soul of the world. This takes shape in the fantasy that absolute precision is possible and therefore absolute power in sufficient applied rationality. Absolutes of this kind have always belonged to divinity in the human experience. As a result, Science is imagined and followed religiously as revealing The Truth rather than supporting one method of inquiry, and the mechanistic metaphors of industrialism (efficiency, progress, development, etc.) comprise a new and overpowering fantasy of divinity, rather than an essential subcategory in a larger idea of meaning.
Psychology emerged alongside the global transition to industrial domination and is firmly shaped by the scientistic imagination of perfection (health) believed in by medical doctors who were its first practitioners. As psychology became ubiquitous in the 20th century its hypothetical and imaginative jargon ("obsessive-compulsive", "The Unconscious", "well-adjusted") was transformed into literalistic diagnoses as though they were proven facts and became everyday words. With these reductionistic explanations for the utterly mysterious firmly fixed as lenses in the frames of perception, contemporary people are almost entirely estranged from the making of meaning through sympathy for and understanding of story, soul, and sorrow. The mechanistic/medical fantasy of health continues to reform what began as "depth" psychology (and healing itself) such that learning how to live, suffer and celebrate the making of meaning, and then die well have fallen beneath the hooves of stampeding ego-psychology. "Progress" is now equivalent with Good and "Self Help" has become the ultimate aim.
I hope we will learn to prefer to cultivate sympathy and understanding for the vast realm of experience that the self cannot help, is painful, Other, and therefore rejected as illegitimate. It is what we refuse to consider deeply and end up denying that causes "failure of imagination" that precludes honest preparation for real suffering. This also leads to ineffective action that virtually abets painfully obvious stock villains bombing other people's children to gain control "essential to our national interests and security". The remedy for this I call "martial nonviolence" - that use of shared power that insists on practicing arts of peace, defined as conflict done well such that all participants in a given system get support to secure what every human needs and have repeated chances to get some of what they want as well.
In the industrial mind it is obligatory to expect to never be sick, never suffer from pain, fulfill all your dreams, and live to an endlessly postponed (more cryo-frozen and botoxic than ripe) old age, but that is not balanced and appropriate for being human. I hope to be sick and suffer legitimately but as briefly as possible, relate to my dreams as though they are invitations to an autonomous realm wherein my capacity for wonder and understanding may become more sophisticated, and live to an age at which I may be at least a bit excited at the prospect of dying well and meeting whatever might or might not come next.
I lost my child with no reason given in December of 2006. Holding my suddenly and inexplicably dead first-born in my arms removed all doubt about the fantasy that it is possible never to suffer. The experience did not damage me so that I cannot love life and adopt a darker view to match my inner loss. Rather, it stripped away a natural privilege of childhood - the illusion which insists on enthroning simplistic Hope for an endlessly sunny future in the legitimate place of powerlessness and sorrow. Hope, like all the other gods, is only a usurper when it insists it reigns alone.
Re-reading this it becomes clear that I have gone on too long and abstrusely, as I feared. I hope this finds you in a patient frame of mind and that you will forgive me my excesses.
Brandon
P.S. I haven't read the book you mention but would like hear what you think of it. If you'd like to read someone who says what I mean much more accessibly you might read Thomas Moore, or more precisely - James Hillman.
Labels: daily
| posted by Unknown @ 7/29/2008 07:01:00 PM
I respect John Abbe's authentic process of forming opinions...
Post from John Abbe's Blog on the Obama for President website
Obama for President
| |
| Also listed in: Eugene for Obama | Geeks For Obama |
After the last presidential election, i promised myself i'd do something toward making sure we didn't end up with another excessively fear-oriented president in 2009, even if it meant working for a Democrat. I have no elan for any political party, and certainly never expected to see an electable candidate that i actually felt any genuine support for. I thought i would give a little money, maybe put in a few hours in the general election, and that would be that. When i first noticed Obama at all, i wrote him off as just another politician. After all, he is one - i mean, he's certainly genuine in many ways, but he's also calculating and strategic, and doesn't just let his gut reactions pop out of his mouth (i miss Mike Gravel!). And his policy proposals are for the most part solidly in the old mainstream.
But after some people i respect got excited...
I took a closer look. Lawrence Lessig's video endorsement really hit me - all of his points, but especially when it raised in me the hope that an Obama presidency could lead to a reframing of the post-9/11 world. Frankly, tears came to my eyes as i imagined that tragic event not leaving us in a permanent attitude of war, but instead opening us to see the U.S.'s role in the world more clearly - what it has been, and more importantly what it could be.
In Obama's interview at Google, he shares specific policies for more transparency and citizen involvement. But more importantly, at about 38:30 in the video Google CEO Eric Schmidt asks him about race. Obama's response is to affirm it as a major issue for America in the 20th century, and suggest that the 21st century extension of it is "the other" - in general, the willingness and ability reach across the usual divisions, to acknowledge the humanity of everyone and find a way forward that works for all. And he clearly lives this out politically, in his willingness to work with opponents. The classic example is the unanimous vote in the Illinois senate to place cameras in police interrogation rooms - he won over police groups and Republican and Democratic politicians who initially opposed it. In the video he even uses Sri Lanka as an example, explaining that the long-running Tamil-Sinhalese civil war does not relate to race. (Lanka is close to my heart - for 10 years i was married to a Sri Lankan woman, and lived in the country for three years.)
Anyone who knows me knows this is a giant issue for me. The way he talks about the other is not primarily about race, or Democrats and Republicans, but as a general human theme, the millenia-old cultural habit of making people we have some disagreement with into irredeemable "bad guys" (see Assumptions of Power-with Culture). Othering, and its inverse inclusion, are a major theme in the Process Arts in general, and any particular process that holds my interest. As i've gotten older and taken science fiction more seriously, i've ended up exploring the theme of other sentients in the genre. Could we really have a president who takes the issue of inclusion seriously?
It hasn't been too hard to keep my feet on the ground. I don't expect a lot from him directly, and i won't hesitate to criticize him (FISA? the death penalty!?). But i can genuinely get excited about working to elect him, because i believe he really could play a role in shifts that matter to me, that i believe are crucial to our survival and thriving as a species.
So, during the primaries i gave money a couple of times (never done that before), and called twenty people in Ohio (never done any work for a campaign before). I even switched registration from Green to Democrat so that i could vote for him in the primary (don't worry, i'll switch back :-). And now i've connected with a very cool local organizer (hi Rosie!) and will be supporting her and the local effort as i can.
Stay tuned for more on my experiences in the campaign, and thoughts on an Obama presidency and how it might relate to power-with cultural/political shifts.
But after some people i respect got excited...
I took a closer look. Lawrence Lessig's video endorsement really hit me - all of his points, but especially when it raised in me the hope that an Obama presidency could lead to a reframing of the post-9/11 world. Frankly, tears came to my eyes as i imagined that tragic event not leaving us in a permanent attitude of war, but instead opening us to see the U.S.'s role in the world more clearly - what it has been, and more importantly what it could be.
In Obama's interview at Google, he shares specific policies for more transparency and citizen involvement. But more importantly, at about 38:30 in the video Google CEO Eric Schmidt asks him about race. Obama's response is to affirm it as a major issue for America in the 20th century, and suggest that the 21st century extension of it is "the other" - in general, the willingness and ability reach across the usual divisions, to acknowledge the humanity of everyone and find a way forward that works for all. And he clearly lives this out politically, in his willingness to work with opponents. The classic example is the unanimous vote in the Illinois senate to place cameras in police interrogation rooms - he won over police groups and Republican and Democratic politicians who initially opposed it. In the video he even uses Sri Lanka as an example, explaining that the long-running Tamil-Sinhalese civil war does not relate to race. (Lanka is close to my heart - for 10 years i was married to a Sri Lankan woman, and lived in the country for three years.)
Anyone who knows me knows this is a giant issue for me. The way he talks about the other is not primarily about race, or Democrats and Republicans, but as a general human theme, the millenia-old cultural habit of making people we have some disagreement with into irredeemable "bad guys" (see Assumptions of Power-with Culture). Othering, and its inverse inclusion, are a major theme in the Process Arts in general, and any particular process that holds my interest. As i've gotten older and taken science fiction more seriously, i've ended up exploring the theme of other sentients in the genre. Could we really have a president who takes the issue of inclusion seriously?
It hasn't been too hard to keep my feet on the ground. I don't expect a lot from him directly, and i won't hesitate to criticize him (FISA? the death penalty!?). But i can genuinely get excited about working to elect him, because i believe he really could play a role in shifts that matter to me, that i believe are crucial to our survival and thriving as a species.
So, during the primaries i gave money a couple of times (never done that before), and called twenty people in Ohio (never done any work for a campaign before). I even switched registration from Green to Democrat so that i could vote for him in the primary (don't worry, i'll switch back :-). And now i've connected with a very cool local organizer (hi Rosie!) and will be supporting her and the local effort as i can.
Stay tuned for more on my experiences in the campaign, and thoughts on an Obama presidency and how it might relate to power-with cultural/political shifts.
Labels: commons, daily, polis, politics
| posted by Unknown @ 7/27/2008 09:59:00 PM
Enough messin' around.
I've decided to title my dissertation Mythos der Frieden: Ein Versuch die Neurosen und Psychosen gleichmässig und pragmatisch zu klassifizierun auf Grund der Untersuchung von fünfzehn hundert Fällen wie siz diagnostiziert sein würden in der Terminologie von den verschiedenen Schulen der Gegenwart Zusamen mit einer Chronologie solcher Subdivisionen der Meinung welche unabhängig enstanden sind.*
A German title should be just the thing, especially as I don't speak German and the rest will not include German of any kind, save the names Freud, Adler, and Rank liberally sprinkled, so I have to get the weight of it rolling right up front.
*appreciation to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night for Dick Diver
I've decided to title my dissertation Mythos der Frieden: Ein Versuch die Neurosen und Psychosen gleichmässig und pragmatisch zu klassifizierun auf Grund der Untersuchung von fünfzehn hundert Fällen wie siz diagnostiziert sein würden in der Terminologie von den verschiedenen Schulen der Gegenwart Zusamen mit einer Chronologie solcher Subdivisionen der Meinung welche unabhängig enstanden sind.*
A German title should be just the thing, especially as I don't speak German and the rest will not include German of any kind, save the names Freud, Adler, and Rank liberally sprinkled, so I have to get the weight of it rolling right up front.
*appreciation to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night for Dick Diver
Labels: satire
| posted by Unknown @ 7/24/2008 07:11:00 PM
Politics of Fear
the New Yorker Obama cover and the McCain Vanity Fair cover
I'm fascinated. The battle has to do, again, with "the hearts and minds" of the electorate and controlling what we think is good and bad so approbation, money, and eventual votes may be directed "appropriately".
Starting point: Fear those Other People who are extremists and will do whatever it takes to control our political and then daily life. Trust your fear.
Media-ted response: Politics of Fear = bad. Don't let those Other People cause you to vote based on your fear.
But what are the appropriate uses of your legitimate fear/concern that arises from our actual political history? The Obamas are certainly not islamist terrorists while McCain certainly is a continuation of Bush and the empire agenda. Is it as obvious as the New Yorker satire serves The Truth and Vanity Fair is in someone's pocket not interested in same? Good guys vs Those Other People simplicity? Appreciation or condemnation of political campaign maneuvering facilitated by Those Other People in partisan media outlets?
Am I (is everyone) simply attempting to increase their own power by making their tribe more influential? Am I (or They) to be dismissed because, of the two viable choices, I support Obama and you should fear my making you fear Those Other People with this critical inquiry? What does t/Truth look like?
Carbon-free: Welcome to the Mainstream
Labels: daily
| posted by Unknown @ 7/24/2008 10:50:00 AM
Which Jesus is your favorite?
What if the unrecognizable widths to which "religion" is imagined were acknowledged as reality rather than dismissed by some as non-doctrinal, as though that would shrink a mythology down to a manageable size?
Amen.
Pass the pop culture.
When the video goes away click here. | posted by Unknown @ 7/11/2008 07:35:00 PM
What if the unrecognizable widths to which "religion" is imagined were acknowledged as reality rather than dismissed by some as non-doctrinal, as though that would shrink a mythology down to a manageable size?
Amen.
Pass the pop culture.
When the video goes away click here. | posted by Unknown @ 7/11/2008 07:35:00 PM
The Lorax
In the context of the Berkeley Tree-sitters my sister, Meghan, just reminded me of The Lorax by Dr Seuss who speaks "for the trees, I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues..." https://bdwc.wikispaces.com/message/view/Progress/4793405 The Lorax has been connected with activism many times before but I haven't seen it connected with the UC protest yet.
E'beth
On another note, the big sister, Miriam, of an earliest friend, Elizabeth, from way back in my childhood just made contact because I attempted to connect with her Mom, Leta, through Facebook. Very psyched about that.I'm going to read at Epworth this Sunday
Various other versions are standard but I may use the New Oxford Study Bible (below) for the "approved" first reading this Sunday and then do my own storytelling version of the same scripture for the second reading.
Matthew 13:1-9 The Parable of the Sower
Listen to this passageView commentary related to this passage
The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV w Apocrypha)
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!
here is my version of the story... :-)
Jesus spent a lot of time walking around and talking to everyone he met about what it would be like to live in a world where people are in love with God and each other. Sometimes he argued with people who wanted to argue, and told stories people knew well but in new ways and with questions in them to make people listen and think at the same time. If you listen carefully, you can hear how this is a story...about story telling.
One sabbath, when absolutely everybody was observing the law to take a rest from work, Jesus and his friends started (what would be a really long day) in a field picking grain for their breakfast. When the people who had serious doubts about Jesus gave him a really hard time about that, he said straight out that he was more important than the law. This made them really angry because the law was almost the most important thing in the world to them.
Then he went straight to City Hall, in front of everybody, and did the "work" of curing a man's withered hand, and argued with them even more. All this made them so upset they talked privately about having him killed. Jesus made it out of there but crowds of people followed him. He cured all of them too, but then asked them to keep all this a secret, and as the day went on he kept walking, curing people who needed it, arguing with angry people, and ended up at a friend's house next to the Sea of Galilee. He even refused to speak to his mother and brothers who were trying to get a word about all this with him in private. After a while he went out of the house and down to the sea shore {point toward the altar}, where so many people swarmed around that he got into a boat and told them stories from there.
"Listen! A farmer went out to plant. And as she sowed {demonstrate casting seeds}, some seeds fell where people walk a lot so the ground was packed hard {center aisle}. Birds came and ate every seed. Other seeds fell on rocky ground {pews} where their roots couldn't reach the good soil and, though they grew quickly, when the sun came up they dried up and died. Other seeds fell into the thorny weeds which grew up and smothered them.
Other seeds fell into good soil {altar area} and yielded tons of grain, some making even a hundred more plants for every seed, some sixty, some thirty.
Anyone with ears can not only hear what I say but also can listen to what the story means!
Labels: daily
| posted by Unknown @ 7/10/2008 06:15:00 PM
Heavens 2 Betsy!
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo. | posted by Unknown @ 7/07/2008 04:58:00 PM
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo. | posted by Unknown @ 7/07/2008 04:58:00 PM
