I have heard you now a couple of times in the mcgilchrist meetings and appreciate the genuine search i feel between the lines. Iain points in his books to the end of an era, the end of a way. He does a great job of mapping the flaws of that way and he tries to outline what will be. But he does it in the manner available.
Maybe you saturday morning overwhelm is the realisation this way we know won't do. It is language itself that is crumbling. A real babylonian moment of loss is almost here it seems. No improved precise set of words will help. No amount arguing gets us out.
What can be grasped isn't it. Frustratingly simple. Intellect is your core strength and it doesn't suffice.
It doesn't mean we stop communicating, just that we realise its babble, or rather, its singing. We must sing our souls through the words.
(May I humbly invite you to read my post called String Theory, here on Substack? I think you will appreciate the idea.)
Great read Jonathan, with the last night ritual reminding me of the 'moonbow, above Victoria falls during the darkest night of a full moon. An experience that can turn the mind to marvel & wonder about the first 'sign' of humanity's covenant with creation, in that metaphorical history of the species homo sapiens (wise) so aphoristically recorded in 'The Bible.'
Your thoughts on Iain's book and the 'adulation' response to his talk reminds me of how we are all parentified people and the fact that all babies babble regardless of place or race, before we become that well-practiced tower of sophisticated babble named an 'adult.' A context frame that makes the Latin meaning of sapiens (wise) awfully ironic after reading the opening quotations and lines of chapter 3 in The Matter with Things.
Personally, I'm dismayed by the way people don't seem to get the ultimately arbitrary nature of language, regardless of race or place, this most important chapter of the book implies, at least for me. Its a prime example, I would argue, of Western culture's curse of overvaluing thinking as a possible guide to the future at a time when the revenge of real is clearly demonstrating just how unwise we sapiens really are.
And is this because we are comprehensively prone to self-deception, in a shared conscious need for certainty that is compelled to deny the subconscious orchestration of all our behaviors, especially perception? Speaking as one who try's to experience attention, not just a moral act, but a perceptive act, I was frustrated by an expectation that Iain's latest book would explore the 'primacy of affect' more than it seems to have done?
While your Saturday morning experience speaks to me of the species homo sapiens problem with the 'transmission of affect,' we saw in the Capital Hill riots in America and more recently in France, as the way emotional contagion can be transmitted like a virus? A subconscious phenomenon of being human that so hard to address without destroying the 'vital lies' that help deny simple truths, as Daniel Goldman points out in his book, VITAL LIES, SIMPLE TRUTHS: The psychology of Self-Deception.
Goldman concludes that book with thoughts about a cure for an ancient malady and my own reading journey has involved a similar idea about what you experienced on that day of the Sun, our addiction to the reification-fallacy of a consensus-reality, names 'Saturday.' But as they say "what's in a name?" Everything and nothing? Should we consider a one-world language? With an adaptive realization about the ultimately arbitrary nature of all languages, in their signification of the absolute nature of reality?
Please keep up the good work and perhaps give some thought to innate affects as our non-conscious orienting responses to the reality of experience. To wit, these words may help:
"The transmission of affect questions the individuality of persons, and how our individuality is achieved and maintained. We cannot grasp what is truly distinctive about individuality, without first coming to appreciate, that it is not to be taken for granted. What is not to be taken for granted, is the distinction between the individual and the environment at the level of physical and biological exchange. At this level, the “energetic” affects of others enter the individual, as are the individuals energetic affects transmitted into the environment. Here lies the key to why people in groups, crowds and gatherings can often be “of one mind.” (p, 8.)" ― The Transmission of Affect, Teresa Brennan, PhD.
Thanks David, I enjoyed all of that. It’s true that Iain doesn’t spend much time on the kind of phenomenon you mention, which doesn’t easily fit into his model, and yet is extremely important. This line made me laugh out loud: “that well-practiced tower of sophisticated babble named an 'adult.'” 😂
I have heard you now a couple of times in the mcgilchrist meetings and appreciate the genuine search i feel between the lines. Iain points in his books to the end of an era, the end of a way. He does a great job of mapping the flaws of that way and he tries to outline what will be. But he does it in the manner available.
Maybe you saturday morning overwhelm is the realisation this way we know won't do. It is language itself that is crumbling. A real babylonian moment of loss is almost here it seems. No improved precise set of words will help. No amount arguing gets us out.
What can be grasped isn't it. Frustratingly simple. Intellect is your core strength and it doesn't suffice.
It doesn't mean we stop communicating, just that we realise its babble, or rather, its singing. We must sing our souls through the words.
(May I humbly invite you to read my post called String Theory, here on Substack? I think you will appreciate the idea.)
Great read Jonathan, with the last night ritual reminding me of the 'moonbow, above Victoria falls during the darkest night of a full moon. An experience that can turn the mind to marvel & wonder about the first 'sign' of humanity's covenant with creation, in that metaphorical history of the species homo sapiens (wise) so aphoristically recorded in 'The Bible.'
Your thoughts on Iain's book and the 'adulation' response to his talk reminds me of how we are all parentified people and the fact that all babies babble regardless of place or race, before we become that well-practiced tower of sophisticated babble named an 'adult.' A context frame that makes the Latin meaning of sapiens (wise) awfully ironic after reading the opening quotations and lines of chapter 3 in The Matter with Things.
Personally, I'm dismayed by the way people don't seem to get the ultimately arbitrary nature of language, regardless of race or place, this most important chapter of the book implies, at least for me. Its a prime example, I would argue, of Western culture's curse of overvaluing thinking as a possible guide to the future at a time when the revenge of real is clearly demonstrating just how unwise we sapiens really are.
And is this because we are comprehensively prone to self-deception, in a shared conscious need for certainty that is compelled to deny the subconscious orchestration of all our behaviors, especially perception? Speaking as one who try's to experience attention, not just a moral act, but a perceptive act, I was frustrated by an expectation that Iain's latest book would explore the 'primacy of affect' more than it seems to have done?
While your Saturday morning experience speaks to me of the species homo sapiens problem with the 'transmission of affect,' we saw in the Capital Hill riots in America and more recently in France, as the way emotional contagion can be transmitted like a virus? A subconscious phenomenon of being human that so hard to address without destroying the 'vital lies' that help deny simple truths, as Daniel Goldman points out in his book, VITAL LIES, SIMPLE TRUTHS: The psychology of Self-Deception.
Goldman concludes that book with thoughts about a cure for an ancient malady and my own reading journey has involved a similar idea about what you experienced on that day of the Sun, our addiction to the reification-fallacy of a consensus-reality, names 'Saturday.' But as they say "what's in a name?" Everything and nothing? Should we consider a one-world language? With an adaptive realization about the ultimately arbitrary nature of all languages, in their signification of the absolute nature of reality?
Please keep up the good work and perhaps give some thought to innate affects as our non-conscious orienting responses to the reality of experience. To wit, these words may help:
"The transmission of affect questions the individuality of persons, and how our individuality is achieved and maintained. We cannot grasp what is truly distinctive about individuality, without first coming to appreciate, that it is not to be taken for granted. What is not to be taken for granted, is the distinction between the individual and the environment at the level of physical and biological exchange. At this level, the “energetic” affects of others enter the individual, as are the individuals energetic affects transmitted into the environment. Here lies the key to why people in groups, crowds and gatherings can often be “of one mind.” (p, 8.)" ― The Transmission of Affect, Teresa Brennan, PhD.
Thanks David, I enjoyed all of that. It’s true that Iain doesn’t spend much time on the kind of phenomenon you mention, which doesn’t easily fit into his model, and yet is extremely important. This line made me laugh out loud: “that well-practiced tower of sophisticated babble named an 'adult.'” 😂