I enjoyed reading this mate. It’s taken me a few days to sit on it and I’m reminded of an idea from Ron Heifetz one of Bob Kegan’s pals who talk about the ‘zone of productive disequilibrium’. What I’m sensing from this essay (and I actually liked the one or two typos– it felt mercifully human) is a ‘zone of productive unintelligiblity’.
So, when you quote Rorty on “speaking differently” I get back to something I inadvertently raised with you: axial shifting. You can’t whack the orb entirely off course, but a transformation is possible from a shifted angle of spin.
Jonathan, I'm grateful to have come across this article. The title of the article says it all, but the essay did not waste a word. At various points throughout the essay I was thinking of the film Arrival and how the alien language was unintelligible to most, and yet it was the woman who understood the language who had the insight that would ultimately save the world.
In my own experience, you can articulate yourself brilliantly, yet there will always be an element of the old paradigm that asks you to flatten. Building a bridge or creating a mutation in human consciousness is not the same as abandoning the change or diluting the medicine. Therein lies the tension—and the wonder.
Jonathan, I am this morning wondering, as a recovering attorney who worked in the area of (US)civil rights and studied International Human Rights, how the Carney ’variable geometry’ alternative to the pre January 2026 Trump implosion of the UN/NATO framework would help or hinder ’civil society’ voice in addressing the meta crisis. I know there is a lot to unpack in the way I framed the question. I am really just feeling that all of a sudden for many of those with speaking parts at Davos there is a degree of ”inintelligibility” and in that there does seem to be peril but also potential. I am of course worried that there will be a lack of imagination and an instinct to pull up the draw bridge and hunker in guarding the old order and its interests and relying on old scripts of spheres of influence. If Carney’s paradigm gets a foothold then I feel like civil society needs to make sure ’it’/we has/have a voice/speaking parts (intelligible and in-intelligible) in this more fluid configuration.
I'd love to read about how money fits into you view, Jonathan. I know there must be a million things demanding your time but when I read your excellent work 'money' seems like the elephant in the room. It has an direct, special and intimate relation to value. Perspectiva's existence relies on the fact that the logics of capital - money employed to make money - have been exploited to great effect by your co-founder. This is not a criticism. But it does - for me , at least - highlight how money is the unspoken object of discourse.
Will transformation operate within the current logics of money? Will those logics of remain intact. Will they be changed? What will our social and individual relations with money look like. Is that possible transformation intelligible?
I have given quite a bit of thought to money, but I don’t seem to experience it as being as centrally relevant as you seem to (I see our current relationship to money, including philanthropy, as part of the H2minus vortex). In terms of Tomas, his book, The Market Myth, contends directly with money as a kind of social construct (and he hasn’t financially supported Perspectiva since 2017). You might still be right that it’s a kind of blind spot, but if so it’s one I’ll continue to keep an eye on! 👁️
I'm privileged to witness people's varying reactions to what I do (and what they do) with money. Perhaps this helps remind me of the elephant's presence.
Money's relation to religion (and sacrifice before it) is noted in much academic literature. As is money's role in the formation of thought.
Against the 'social construct' view I'd argue that whether or not money is *just* a social relation is immaterial to the fact (as Graeber) put it that "the crux of the [economic] argument always seems to turn on the nature of money"
I found 'wishing away money' to be a constant theme over the years. I'm guilty of it myself, still, at a personal level. Here's Mark Fisher quoting Zizek:
"Capitalist ideology in general, Žižek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Žižek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behaviour precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads."
Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative? (2009) p.17
I'll do my best to keep my "Rowson money hassles" to a once a year thing! :-). I'm a regular reader of The Joyous Struggle, a fan and I often refer people to your work. I mentioned your excellent Make Consciousness Great Against in yesterday's post. So thanks for all you do. Xx
Thanks for that, Jonathan. Much to ponder (as always!). İ personally don't understand the desire to transform the world or the elites -though I do hear a lot of people think in those terms. Students want to change the world; admin. often harps on about how education and technology are or should be transformative. Before them: Marxists, colonialists,...
At least one once a week, I think to myself, "what's the point of philosophical concepts and ideas in the face of this era of global collapse-catastrophe-breakthrough? We need ACTION, man!" Then I wonder what kind of action, given how much freaking action is already being enacted... and bam, I'm in the classic paralysis loop. Reading this helps me tune into the ways we might break from that paralysis loop... or, perhaps, surf through it's barrel. Language *is* a kind of action. It has the symbolic potential to move us into a neuro-physio-spiritual state that enables us to surf the loop, riding it all the way out to the breakers
I enjoyed reading this mate. It’s taken me a few days to sit on it and I’m reminded of an idea from Ron Heifetz one of Bob Kegan’s pals who talk about the ‘zone of productive disequilibrium’. What I’m sensing from this essay (and I actually liked the one or two typos– it felt mercifully human) is a ‘zone of productive unintelligiblity’.
So, when you quote Rorty on “speaking differently” I get back to something I inadvertently raised with you: axial shifting. You can’t whack the orb entirely off course, but a transformation is possible from a shifted angle of spin.
Ed Sanders, beat poet and Fug, had a favorite line from Plato:
'When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.'
Bit like your Rorty quote on 'The chief instrument of cultural change'.
Jonathan, I'm grateful to have come across this article. The title of the article says it all, but the essay did not waste a word. At various points throughout the essay I was thinking of the film Arrival and how the alien language was unintelligible to most, and yet it was the woman who understood the language who had the insight that would ultimately save the world.
In my own experience, you can articulate yourself brilliantly, yet there will always be an element of the old paradigm that asks you to flatten. Building a bridge or creating a mutation in human consciousness is not the same as abandoning the change or diluting the medicine. Therein lies the tension—and the wonder.
So glad you gave this a shot! Well worth it. Raw but integrating…all the work you’ve done working for you/us/the article like fascia.
Jonathan, I am this morning wondering, as a recovering attorney who worked in the area of (US)civil rights and studied International Human Rights, how the Carney ’variable geometry’ alternative to the pre January 2026 Trump implosion of the UN/NATO framework would help or hinder ’civil society’ voice in addressing the meta crisis. I know there is a lot to unpack in the way I framed the question. I am really just feeling that all of a sudden for many of those with speaking parts at Davos there is a degree of ”inintelligibility” and in that there does seem to be peril but also potential. I am of course worried that there will be a lack of imagination and an instinct to pull up the draw bridge and hunker in guarding the old order and its interests and relying on old scripts of spheres of influence. If Carney’s paradigm gets a foothold then I feel like civil society needs to make sure ’it’/we has/have a voice/speaking parts (intelligible and in-intelligible) in this more fluid configuration.
Thanks. Thinking about this.
I just feel…especially with the Davos elitism vibe of who gets to decide..that civil society has to insert itself from the get go
Davos generates an extraordinary density of signals — initiatives, panels, narratives, commitments.
What remains comparatively rare is work on the layer beneath all of that:
the conditions under which decisions remain viable when information is incomplete and consequences cannot be outsourced.
That distinction — momentum versus orientation — has quietly shaped much of my recent research and writing.
Not as critique of Davos, but as a complement to it.
For those interested in that underlying layer, I’ve laid out the argument here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/leontsvasmansapiognosis/p/davos-cant-fix-what-it-cant-see
— Leon Tsvasman
I'd love to read about how money fits into you view, Jonathan. I know there must be a million things demanding your time but when I read your excellent work 'money' seems like the elephant in the room. It has an direct, special and intimate relation to value. Perspectiva's existence relies on the fact that the logics of capital - money employed to make money - have been exploited to great effect by your co-founder. This is not a criticism. But it does - for me , at least - highlight how money is the unspoken object of discourse.
Will transformation operate within the current logics of money? Will those logics of remain intact. Will they be changed? What will our social and individual relations with money look like. Is that possible transformation intelligible?
...with love and respect for the work you do. xx
I have given quite a bit of thought to money, but I don’t seem to experience it as being as centrally relevant as you seem to (I see our current relationship to money, including philanthropy, as part of the H2minus vortex). In terms of Tomas, his book, The Market Myth, contends directly with money as a kind of social construct (and he hasn’t financially supported Perspectiva since 2017). You might still be right that it’s a kind of blind spot, but if so it’s one I’ll continue to keep an eye on! 👁️
Thank you, Jonathan.
I'm privileged to witness people's varying reactions to what I do (and what they do) with money. Perhaps this helps remind me of the elephant's presence.
Money's relation to religion (and sacrifice before it) is noted in much academic literature. As is money's role in the formation of thought.
Against the 'social construct' view I'd argue that whether or not money is *just* a social relation is immaterial to the fact (as Graeber) put it that "the crux of the [economic] argument always seems to turn on the nature of money"
I found 'wishing away money' to be a constant theme over the years. I'm guilty of it myself, still, at a personal level. Here's Mark Fisher quoting Zizek:
"Capitalist ideology in general, Žižek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Žižek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behaviour precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads."
Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative? (2009) p.17
I'll do my best to keep my "Rowson money hassles" to a once a year thing! :-). I'm a regular reader of The Joyous Struggle, a fan and I often refer people to your work. I mentioned your excellent Make Consciousness Great Against in yesterday's post. So thanks for all you do. Xx
Thank you, those are important thoughts. And you are welcome to hassle me about not paying sufficient attention to money every six months if you like!
Thanks for that, Jonathan. Much to ponder (as always!). İ personally don't understand the desire to transform the world or the elites -though I do hear a lot of people think in those terms. Students want to change the world; admin. often harps on about how education and technology are or should be transformative. Before them: Marxists, colonialists,...
Man, exquisite as ever. Thank you.
Thank you! 🙏
Perhaps money that supports giving rather than just getting.
At least one once a week, I think to myself, "what's the point of philosophical concepts and ideas in the face of this era of global collapse-catastrophe-breakthrough? We need ACTION, man!" Then I wonder what kind of action, given how much freaking action is already being enacted... and bam, I'm in the classic paralysis loop. Reading this helps me tune into the ways we might break from that paralysis loop... or, perhaps, surf through it's barrel. Language *is* a kind of action. It has the symbolic potential to move us into a neuro-physio-spiritual state that enables us to surf the loop, riding it all the way out to the breakers
https://tinyurl.com/3xc35huc