Thank you for this bold, courageous and necessary essay, Jonathan. As we learn to hold the tension between either/or and both/and, we may be better able to discern what the moment is asking of us if we identify our hierarchy of values. To do this requires extensive inner work. Essays like this not only serve as inspiration but as direction finders as well.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your soul-searching effort. The paradox is: 'If you defend yourself, you will be attacked." It easily becomes a screw without an end!
In the six-day war in 1967, the Arab nations attacked Israel with around 435000 troops, 8000 tanks, and 2000 aircraft in order, as they had declared for some time, to destroy and annihilate the Jewish Nation. Miraculously something seemed to cause paralysis of the Arab military operation as witnessed by many Arab soldiers: "We just couldn't move." with the result of Israel gaining Jerusalem, not part of the Balfour declaration. No doubt causing tensions ever since and remaining during the event of the 7th of October. See, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. By John Hagee, 2013. Also, I can recommend a very moving book: "I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity." 2011
Izzeldin Abuelaish. A book my daughter recommended, a book of hope for the future.
I'm afraid peace has no future so long as people are in charge who believe that they have a divine and/or natural right to order the world according to their desires and, most particularly, their profit. Whiteness and colonialism are their inventions. Denialism (lying) is one of their playbook standards. Concern for the well-being of people and the planet is never anything other than public relations to them.
Re 'either or', 'both and' and 'both either or and both and', do we get 'neither nor' in there as a consequence?
My feeling is that the metacrisis calls for a willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to confront the fear of losing what one has. Your post suggests this just scratches the surface. Your 'denial', and Bayo's 'reconciliation', and more, suggest the need for confrontation with the fear of losing who one is: we need to change at the level of how one self-identifies, and there is much paradoxical that bears here.
I've puzzled over how to think of 'the vertical dimension'. Progress is possible, and I think it can help with the paradoxical-seeming, and otherwise seductive difficulties, of this space. Again I think there are allusions in your piece to the need to go there.
Let us return to Galtungs 1990 paper, "Cultural Violence" and we can see how things were viewed in 1990 through his Peace Studies lens, and we can see what has changed. The State of Israel is now emboldened to move beyond Cultural Violence, to widespread, some say genocidal, Direct Violence. Of course, the trigger for this was the Hamas atrocities, but the violence was latent in the state of Israel all along.
"For a contemporary example [of Cultural Violence] consider the
policies of Israel with regard to the Palesti-
nians. The Chosen People even have a Pro-
mised Land, the Eretz Yisrael. They behave
as one would expect, translating chosenness,
a vicious type of cultural violence, into all
eight types of direct and structural violence:
There is.killing; maiming,
material deprivation by denying West Bank
inhabitants what is needed for livelihood;
there is desocialization within the theocratic
state of Israel with second class citizenship to
non-Jews; there is detention, individual
expulsion and perennial threat of massive
expulsion. There is exploitation, at least as
exploitation B [ against self determination needs].
The four structural concomitants of
exploitation are all well developed: efforts to
make the Palestinians see themselves as born
underdogs, at most heading for second class
citizenship by 'getting used to it'; giving them
small segments of economic activity; keeping
them outside Jewish society both within and
outside the Green Line, and dealing with
Palestinians in a divide et impera mode (as in
the Camp David process), never as one peo-
ple. There is neither massive extermination
nor massive exploitation A of the sort found
in many Third World countries under the
debt burden, which above all hits children.
The violence is more evenly distributed over
the whole repertory of eight types. To some,
who set their sights low, defined by Hitlerite
or Stalinist extermination and Reaganite
exploitation A [against survival needs], this means that no mass
Given that neuroscience research is revealing just how foolishly self-ignorant we human beings are, in our confusion about the make-believe nature of language, as a tool of thought we primarily use for self-affectation, the essay reveals more of your own desire for peace of mind than the future of peace for humanity, in my opinion.
As I alluded to in my comment the the first of this series, the metacrisis will likely become understood as the messiah of humanity's end of alienation from the cosmic reality of being-in-time and the fulfillment of the New Testament's 'intuitive' understanding of the human condition upon the cross of space-time.
Can I remind you of the alienist's perspective from a few decades ago when people like R. D. Laing and Gregory Bateson were voicing their perspective on the perennial nature of the human condition.
When in the context of my heretical suggestion that language is a product of make-believe, Bateson said: "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
While in the context of your own thinking:
"Amidst pervasive epistemic confusion and immaturity...
How do we know?
When we create reality and yet are created by it…
How do we ‘get real’?
When we sense automaticity is not always our friend…
How do we wake up?"
Spiritualise: Cultivating spiritual sensibility to address 21st century challenges
Laing offered the the heretical notion of: "How much of what we ordinarily feel, is what we have all been hypnotized to feel? How much of who we are, is what we have been hypnotized to be?"
Laing, R.D.. The Politics of the Family (The CBC Massey Lectures) (p. 12). House of Anansi Press Inc. Kindle Edition.
With all due respect Jonathan, could you 'wake up' to the spell-binding 'affect' within the 'automaticity' (autonomic nervous system) of your literacy skills and the self-hypnotic, self-affecting nature of your mind-sight? Comprehending your psychological self-deception by testing Daniel Goleman's: "For people to comprehend their conditioned self-deception scheme, they must try not to impose a perceptual expectation of mind-sight on the perception capacity of eye-sight," with a simple thought experiment?
Look at any object your eyes see and notice the 'automaticity' of the reality labelling word that springs to mind through the auto-suggestion power of memory. Then ask yourself if labelling the object with any other word you can possibly think of will change the reality of what your eyes are seeing?
Thank you for this bold, courageous and necessary essay, Jonathan. As we learn to hold the tension between either/or and both/and, we may be better able to discern what the moment is asking of us if we identify our hierarchy of values. To do this requires extensive inner work. Essays like this not only serve as inspiration but as direction finders as well.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your soul-searching effort. The paradox is: 'If you defend yourself, you will be attacked." It easily becomes a screw without an end!
In the six-day war in 1967, the Arab nations attacked Israel with around 435000 troops, 8000 tanks, and 2000 aircraft in order, as they had declared for some time, to destroy and annihilate the Jewish Nation. Miraculously something seemed to cause paralysis of the Arab military operation as witnessed by many Arab soldiers: "We just couldn't move." with the result of Israel gaining Jerusalem, not part of the Balfour declaration. No doubt causing tensions ever since and remaining during the event of the 7th of October. See, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. By John Hagee, 2013. Also, I can recommend a very moving book: "I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity." 2011
Izzeldin Abuelaish. A book my daughter recommended, a book of hope for the future.
Brother Niels
I'm afraid peace has no future so long as people are in charge who believe that they have a divine and/or natural right to order the world according to their desires and, most particularly, their profit. Whiteness and colonialism are their inventions. Denialism (lying) is one of their playbook standards. Concern for the well-being of people and the planet is never anything other than public relations to them.
Thank you.
Re 'either or', 'both and' and 'both either or and both and', do we get 'neither nor' in there as a consequence?
My feeling is that the metacrisis calls for a willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to confront the fear of losing what one has. Your post suggests this just scratches the surface. Your 'denial', and Bayo's 'reconciliation', and more, suggest the need for confrontation with the fear of losing who one is: we need to change at the level of how one self-identifies, and there is much paradoxical that bears here.
I've puzzled over how to think of 'the vertical dimension'. Progress is possible, and I think it can help with the paradoxical-seeming, and otherwise seductive difficulties, of this space. Again I think there are allusions in your piece to the need to go there.
Let us return to Galtungs 1990 paper, "Cultural Violence" and we can see how things were viewed in 1990 through his Peace Studies lens, and we can see what has changed. The State of Israel is now emboldened to move beyond Cultural Violence, to widespread, some say genocidal, Direct Violence. Of course, the trigger for this was the Hamas atrocities, but the violence was latent in the state of Israel all along.
"For a contemporary example [of Cultural Violence] consider the
policies of Israel with regard to the Palesti-
nians. The Chosen People even have a Pro-
mised Land, the Eretz Yisrael. They behave
as one would expect, translating chosenness,
a vicious type of cultural violence, into all
eight types of direct and structural violence:
There is.killing; maiming,
material deprivation by denying West Bank
inhabitants what is needed for livelihood;
there is desocialization within the theocratic
state of Israel with second class citizenship to
non-Jews; there is detention, individual
expulsion and perennial threat of massive
expulsion. There is exploitation, at least as
exploitation B [ against self determination needs].
The four structural concomitants of
exploitation are all well developed: efforts to
make the Palestinians see themselves as born
underdogs, at most heading for second class
citizenship by 'getting used to it'; giving them
small segments of economic activity; keeping
them outside Jewish society both within and
outside the Green Line, and dealing with
Palestinians in a divide et impera mode (as in
the Camp David process), never as one peo-
ple. There is neither massive extermination
nor massive exploitation A of the sort found
in many Third World countries under the
debt burden, which above all hits children.
The violence is more evenly distributed over
the whole repertory of eight types. To some,
who set their sights low, defined by Hitlerite
or Stalinist extermination and Reaganite
exploitation A [against survival needs], this means that no mass
violence is going on, thus proving how
humane the Israelis are. Such perspectives
are also examples of cultural violence, indi-
cative of how moral standards have become
in this century." _Galtung 1990
Given that neuroscience research is revealing just how foolishly self-ignorant we human beings are, in our confusion about the make-believe nature of language, as a tool of thought we primarily use for self-affectation, the essay reveals more of your own desire for peace of mind than the future of peace for humanity, in my opinion.
As I alluded to in my comment the the first of this series, the metacrisis will likely become understood as the messiah of humanity's end of alienation from the cosmic reality of being-in-time and the fulfillment of the New Testament's 'intuitive' understanding of the human condition upon the cross of space-time.
Can I remind you of the alienist's perspective from a few decades ago when people like R. D. Laing and Gregory Bateson were voicing their perspective on the perennial nature of the human condition.
When in the context of my heretical suggestion that language is a product of make-believe, Bateson said: "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
While in the context of your own thinking:
"Amidst pervasive epistemic confusion and immaturity...
How do we know?
When we create reality and yet are created by it…
How do we ‘get real’?
When we sense automaticity is not always our friend…
How do we wake up?"
Spiritualise: Cultivating spiritual sensibility to address 21st century challenges
Laing offered the the heretical notion of: "How much of what we ordinarily feel, is what we have all been hypnotized to feel? How much of who we are, is what we have been hypnotized to be?"
Laing, R.D.. The Politics of the Family (The CBC Massey Lectures) (p. 12). House of Anansi Press Inc. Kindle Edition.
With all due respect Jonathan, could you 'wake up' to the spell-binding 'affect' within the 'automaticity' (autonomic nervous system) of your literacy skills and the self-hypnotic, self-affecting nature of your mind-sight? Comprehending your psychological self-deception by testing Daniel Goleman's: "For people to comprehend their conditioned self-deception scheme, they must try not to impose a perceptual expectation of mind-sight on the perception capacity of eye-sight," with a simple thought experiment?
Look at any object your eyes see and notice the 'automaticity' of the reality labelling word that springs to mind through the auto-suggestion power of memory. Then ask yourself if labelling the object with any other word you can possibly think of will change the reality of what your eyes are seeing?
👍🏻