Another important post in this series - thank you Jonathan!
In your early November post (Winking at World History) you made the following comment:
"It’s too deep an issue for now, but Michel Bauwens suggests what this moment may call for is not democracy as such, but what Kojin Karatani calls Isonomia. Karatani’s argument, in The Structure of World History (2014) points to a form of governance that has many democratic elements including a deeper commitment to political equality, but not the centralisation and class conflict that appears to be baked into our current democratic systems.
I am not there yet, but what if the answer to the threat of fascism is not better liberalism but something more like intelligent anarchism?"
We then shared an exchange about Karatani in the comments. In the context of the current post, I'm thinking Karatani could offer some insights to supplement those of Marvin Harris. In "The Structure of World History," Karatani is also rethinking the contributions of Marx, as he posits the idea of Modes of Exchange as a focus rather than Modes of Production. This move brings historical social formations into better focus, and gives superstructures their due consideration. Karatani's trinity is Capital-Nation-State, about which he says the following right off the bat in the Introduction:
"Today's advanced capitalist nations are characterized by a triplex system, the Capital-Nation-State trinity. In its structure, there is first of all a capitalist market economy. If left to its own devices, however, this will inevitably result in economic disparities and class conflict. To counter this, the nation, which is characterized by an intention toward communality and equality, seeks to resolve the various contradictions brought about by the capitalist economy. The state then fulfills this task through such measures as taxation and redistribution or regulations. Capital, nation, and state all differ from one another, with each being grounded in its own distinct set of principles, but here are joined together in a mutually supplementary manner. They are linked in the manner of a Borromean knot, in which the whole system will fail if one of the three is missing.
No one has yet adequately comprehended this structure..."
Karatani's new book, "Power and Modes of Exchange" should have the English translation coming out sometime this year, and should shed more light on the connections between systems, souls, and society.
Thanks for this lovely articulation of things that have bothered me for a while. Particularly your aesthetic dislike of the Map Makers. I also find this difficult. When involved with the Vervaeke crew, whom I love dearly, as you do Greg, I struggled with the endless map-making that was collectively preferred to relational and community-building. An “engineering” approach rather than “growing a garden”. I tended to frame it as “masculine vs feminine”, with a distinct lack of women in the space in general. This is, of course, ridiculously simplistic and perhaps requires the nuanced appreciation of “yin/yang”.
Anyway, love this piece and looking forward to the continuation. 🙏🏽❤️
“nobody should feel status anxiety about their ontology.” This is such a zinger mate! It made me smile and, in doing so, gave me a glimpse of the earlier point you made via Gebser. I’ll have to reread this and phone a friend to form some a quasi-reading group here in Melbourne.
In my own teaching about transformation I offer the poem,
When the three are held in tension,
a fourth arises in a new dimension.
Emergence is the scientific version of Gurdjieff's Law of Three. Cynthia Bourgeault explores this process in her, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three. Nancy Ellen Abrams celebrates emergence in her A God that Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet.
Every new arising is the result of the interplay between at least three forces or conditions. But we can pick a different three qualities to focus on. Each of these sets of three is a valid expression of the Law of Three. Each is a valid perspective. But as Ken Wilber notes, "All perspectives are valid... and partial.
What a feast here for tired ears, eyes – even all the rest of me! Still, both nerdy yet capricious as I am, I found myself wanting to respond in multitudinous ways to your Triptych… i.e. in Detail! Gah – as my biggest kid often says when she is frustrated – that trip would not end … So instead I feel like I need to land on your point of a: “moral imagination being perhaps a sine qua non for the peaceful resolution of conflict”. My theory’s Problem I have been unfolding – seemingly since 3 years old – is about the Internal/External War and Peace Conundrum. It comes from my particular primary trauma – Me living between Pater and Mater (an other triad one can note…)
Now a Daoist, Psychosynthesis and Gestalt oriented psychotheraist for fifty + years, I identify deeply with the significance of ‘the three’. Its import is supported by many years in groups, marital work and in my last 25 years of finally learning deeply in a marriage. After 77 whirls around the Sun, professionally, ethically, philosophically and finally ontologically I have been increasingly sensing a Trialogue Answer that is in ‘me’, around us – and decidedly Way beyond our often stultified Wordings. The model’s first conceptual wriggles that I birthed onto pixels/paper were via poetic challenges to the world back around my father’s passing in 1996.
Put now in my present Yin/Yang/Chi terms of our Autopiloted/Autopiloting functioning, I see a Shift into a Chi based Intentionality as our crucial next step… That step is one beneath, within and beyond words. The ‘term’ Chi needs to be differentiated from (yet honoured as being entangled with) YinYang yet also Yang vs. Yin. Words have become our Biggest Trap. Without graduating to the multilayeredness of these, other seemingly inscrutable words we will struggle far more. Any word needs to be felt, tasted, absorbed, Grokked… Not Nailed down into Arcane Transmogrifications which obscure more than they elucidate. The seeming strangeness of Yin Yang and Chi allows for a fresh start for what way Dao (et al.) can be heard.
Put bluntly, I feel-for/think-on/and-embrace the Threesomeness with Enthusiasm… to me we are having a Pivotal Evolving. A deep echo for me is via one particularly relevant translation of Laozi, that to me ‘nails it”:
"Dao produces unity; unity produces duality; duality produces trinity; trinity produces all things. All things bear the negative principle (Yin) and embrace the positive principle (Yang). Immaterial vitality, the third principle (Chi), makes them harmonious."14. ~ Laozi ~ (italics added. Trans. Dwight Goddard 1919)
Our source ‘location’ (at the heart of what I’ve coined as ELself for Whole, Total, Layered-Layering self) is what I simply call Middle. I call it Middle as that, indeed, is it’s location in the centre of a map of who/how/where we are. All around that Middle are what stops us accessing that Middle… like a Gordian Knot. These are four ego identity areas or zones of Autopiloted~Autopiloting “Part-selves” – i.e. subpersonalities, parts, ego states, parts in IFS, etc. They are and yet live as scripts, habits, elements of Elself fractured. I arrived at these areas by graphing “Caring for Self vs Others” on a vertical axis crossed by being more Passive Body/Yin focused or else Active Mind/Yang focused. The four zones lead to an assembling of more practical means of understanding one’s internal and external understandings, plus in the moment as well as longtidudenal referential patterns.
I agree with your last paragraph. I think that out of systems, souls and society, the systems will take care of themselves if the oneness of the Soul that connects all living things can be perceived and cultivated by society. Beauty and goodness are not as easily disguised as truth and knowledge.
Thanks for this. I enjoyed geeking out on a Sunday lunchtime.
I like the distinction between 'descriptive' and 'generative' ontologies. It reminds me of Marx's quote about the point of philosophy. 'Generative' made me immediately think of Graeber - I think that very much captures the essence of this work.
Popper was good buddies with Hayek... I wrote a short piece 10 years ago about how Hayek's reaction to Freudianism & Marxism pushed/led him to befriend Popper (they were both part of the 'Vienna circle'). I called the piece, "Marx and Freud led Hayek to take Popper's" which I thought was hilarious. Still makes me chortle.
Anyway - at the risk of sounding as one note as I actually am - I would love to see you tackle the ontology of money, Jonathan. I'd love to know where you think it sits in the threeness? Xx
P.S. I skim-read Gregg's medium piece on the IQuad coin. Fair to say his feel for aesthetics is not his strong point. But I like that (perhaps unintentionally) by using a coin he's linking money to self (or sovereignty).
Thanks. I’ll think about money in this context. I’m aware of the Hayek/popper nexus. As an undergrad at Oxford in the late nineties there were a critical mass of people, including one close friend in my cohort, who saw the world through a kind of popper/hayek/thatcher perspective. But I find poppers three world lecture stands mostly free from those associations (and there are of course worse associations).
It is indeed important to fight cartosclerosis, truly a danger of our time.... Great synthesis of thinkers with trinity/threeness in their work. I wonder if what you're working toward is Ontology/Epistemology/Axiology combine and aggregate nonlinearly toward a new Cosmology? That's what this piece makes me think. Have you checked out "The Romance of Reality" by Azarian?
I’m not quite sure what I’m doing to be honest, but it seems to be happening…I guess I’m mostly trying to better understand the language of my organisation - systems, souls, and society - a little more deeply. I’ll check the book, and revert on your email…
Your mention of cigarettes reminded me of an uncomfortable feeling I had recently and is persisting. It may partly be owing to the largely male interest in this field but also to this sense of being drawn into the intellectualism that surrounds these issues. It is quite intoxicating and I feel the drug-like quality of getting stuck into it. I haven't yet worked this out but I sense that I am trying to articulate something that has no words. Perhaps it is that what I need is stories rather than theories.
I'm still onboard, though, as I'm sure that theories along with stories will shape our future.
I hear you on this, Richard, and I hope some of that same feeling came through here, especially towards the end. For what it's worth I have never smoked, partly because I've been a type-one diabetic since I was six, but also for all the other reasons - I did however once write an essay for a creative writing class that was about trying to understand the motivation of smokers without actually smoking, which is where I came across the book I mentioned; I guess I might publish that here at some point since I haven't yet shared it. More generally, I believe we are in a phase of history and/or the evolution of consciousness where the mental/rational structure that built and maintained the modern world is breaking down. The world is becoming not merely complicated and not even just complex, but increasingly chaotic. We can and probably should try to make it as intelligible as possible, but our efforts are likely to feel inadequate. There is a great deal going on for me personally and my organisation Perspectiva that is post-rational, and I am all for other ways of knowing. (That said, though I love stories and see their central relevance, I also think there is a risk of over-valorising them). This particular post was perhaps the most technical I have ever written on here, but it felt necessary for the range of things I am currently trying to articulate as premises for action.
Thanks, Jonathan. I often feel I’m shooting in the dark so I appreciate the affirmation. For the record I’ve never smoked either(!) but I have worked in the addiction field so have some second hand knowledge.
Nothing of us is redundant, physically or psychologically so all approaches should contribute to a vision and this post certainly demonstrates that thought.
Underlying spiritual reality, or overlying? Consider "spirit" as "character." We have (perhaps) Jungian archetypes underlying, but we also have the character-models of our culturally-sustained and -sustaining realms of fictions -- overlying. We could go with Joseph Campbell, explaining the fictions through their harmony with archetypes; but that may be too reductive. There are spirits of the time, transitive, belonging to an age, or a place, which are not the eternal spirits of the archetypes.
Being 20 years older than you, I can remember the shift in character in society triggered by the Beatles (and "British Invasion" in their wake). It was substantial, tangible, fresh ... and fast. Nor was it merely ephemeral. Sometimes the change in style does remake the man, the woman, the in-between -- and our society. Or consider the influences of Humanist and Enlightenment texts, and the social groups which formed to dwell on them in clubs and coffee houses, a few centuries back, fanning the spark of Michel de Montaigne, and then later, in England, of Shaftesbury. Spirits which, while surely rooted in the unconscious, along with archetypes, yet spring in their green finery from fresh seeds thrown on the soils of minds and societies.
Ok, overlying. I see why the terms matter. I am aware for instance of Hilman's distinction between soul and spirit. I am also thinking of Gurdjieff/Bourgeault's cosmology and world's 24 and even 12. And I recently became aware of the idea of 'ontopoetics' by Freya Matthews. I suppose I mean that rather than reality being 95% known and 5% mysterious, these days I find it's more like the other way around. But I need a break for a few days from exacting terminology...
Hillman's wonderful. The simpler way of putting the question I was hand waving at may be: we may think of spirits as ancient sources, yet the most spirited of the arts are surprisingly new. And, as spirits spread in societies, they are templates through which other souls can find expression in new modes. Per Ed Sander's favorite line from Plato, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake."
So spirits are not just to be found underlying, but as such templates, socially shared. Of course, not all such templates are good. The paranoid-conspiracy spirit inhabiting and spread by the paradoxical techno-bro science-denialists manifests dark, dangerous dimensions.
> "But how is anything like that going to happen? It seems to me that it can only happen if the changes somehow co-arise and inform and empower each other."
Bildung, or perhaps more generally wisdom/virtue cultivation, you mention as an important ingredient to the souls part of these changes. My view of wisdom/virtue is that these are practices and "knowledge" that we as agents cultivate in ourselves and each other for their own sake, and I think of them as the "true Tao" in "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao". How do you see the role of wisdom/virtue cultivation in the shaping/transformation of systems and societies? This is a topic I am exploring from several angles currently, and curious to hear if you have trod on this ground as well.
I also share your reaction to Henriques' work, some sort of aversion towards the overly-hierarchical/hyper-rational approach (prevalent in the work of "Hanzi Freinacht" as well, in my opinion), which to me exactly represents the "named Tao" in "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao".
Thanks Severin. On your first point I’ve written about it in a few places. It’s not easy to show casual influences but you can show patterns of co-arising and there are historical examples. Not sure if you’ve read my essay on Bildung but I get into it there: https://cusp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/09-Jonathan-Rowson-online.pdf
Hi again Jonathan. Did you see my other comment? Totally understand you are busy, just wanted to see if a reminder might work. I am passionate about Bildung and wisdom cultivation, so really hoping to hear from you given the value I see in your experience, knowledge, and your own wisdom
I read your essay, and I think it's fantastic, so thank you.
Are you aware of any initiatives in Norway that work on actively integrating Bildung/wisdom cultivation?
Do you and/or Perspectiva have any initiatives ongoing that relate to Bildung?
And any works (articles, books, people..) that you would particularly recommend checking out in the context of your essay that have been published since?
Hi Jonathan. I wonder whether the threeness isn't actually in our minds. In the past when I've tried to talk about complex systems to people I've often found myself using triads and thought I really ought to have a go with other numbers (Buddhists seem better at coming up with different length lists!). It might be partly that humans presented with a diad tend to identify with one side of it, whereas a triad does help us hold the complexity without getting overwhelmed. For instance Gurdjieff played, I think, with the idea of humans having something like seven centres of intelligence (which connects with chakras and also his obsession with octaves) but mostly reverted to talking about us being three-brained (a la Plato).
Mary Douglas' "cultural theory" has two axes (social asymmetry vs group strength) which give rise to five types (individualist, hierarchist, egalitarian, fatalist and hermit) but her followers have tended to focus on the three "active voices" of individualist, hierarchist and egalitarian.
Thanks Laurie. There's a lot to be said for fourness(!). I was joking in my first post. I am familiar with cultural theory and have played with it quite a bit. I also agree that those who use it wrongly neglect fatalism. But as for threeness being 'in our minds' - the point of what I have shared so far is that there are aspects of reality that are not in our minds, and very possibly three of them, only one of which is 'in our minds' as such. It's trickier than that too, for reasons I've mentioned and will get on to. But suffice to say I agree it's not as simple as saying there are three kinds of things in the world and that's that...
Jonathan, I am deeply engaged with your exploration of "threeness". thank you for leading this exploration in this excellent fashion.
I was quite taken with the concept of Generative Ontology and moved by the final paragraph of this post. In that regard i wanted to bring you attention to a remarkable podcast that I listened to hours before reading this post. Josh Schrei's The Emerald Podcast is usually good, sometimes excellent and then, as in this case, astounding: I could not recommend more highly this episode: On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis. I believe it is a beautiful poem, prayer, sound collage and meditation that is profoundly resonant with the idea of getting beyond maps and analysis and into a much deeper relationship with current reality -- a call for a generative ontology and practice without using those terms. Check it out at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-singing-to-the-beloved-in-times-of-crisis/id1465445746?i=1000696748899
What a feast here for tired ears, eyes – even all the rest of me! Still, both nerdy yet capricious as I am, I found myself wanting to respond in multitudinous ways to your Triptych… i.e. in Detail! Gah – as my biggest kid often says when she is frustrated – that trip would not end … So instead I feel like I need to land on your point of a: “moral imagination being perhaps a sine qua non for the peaceful resolution of conflict”. My theory’s Problem I have been unfolding – seemingly since 3 years old – is about the Internal/External War and Peace Conundrum. It comes from my particular primary trauma – Me living between Pater and Mater (an other triad one can note…)
Now a Daoist, Psychosynthesis and Gestalt oriented psychotheraist for fifty + years, I identify deeply with the significance of ‘the three’. Its import is supported by many years in groups, marital work and in my last 25 years of finally learning deeply in a marriage. After 77 whirls around the Sun, professionally, ethically, philosophically and finally ontologically I have been increasingly sensing a Trialogue Answer that is in ‘me’, around us – and decidedly Way beyond our often stultified Wordings. The model’s first conceptual wriggles that I birthed onto pixels/paper were via poetic challenges to the world back around my father’s passing in 1996.
Put now in my present Yin/Yang/Chi terms of our Autopiloted/Autopiloting functioning, I see a Shift into a Chi based Intentionality as our crucial next step… That step is one beneath, within and beyond words. The ‘term’ Chi needs to be differentiated from (yet honoured as being entangled with) YinYang yet also Yang vs. Yin. Words have become our Biggest Trap. Without graduating to the multilayeredness of these, other seemingly inscrutable words we will struggle far more. Any word needs to be felt, tasted, absorbed, Grokked… Not Nailed down into Arcane Transmogrifications which obscure more than they elucidate. The seeming strangeness of Yin Yang and Chi allows for a fresh start for what way Dao (et al.) can be heard.
Put bluntly, I feel-for/think-on/and-embrace the Threesomeness with Enthusiasm… to me we are having a Pivotal Evolving. A deep echo for me is via one particularly relevant translation of Laozi, that to me ‘nails it”:
"Dao produces unity; unity produces duality; duality produces trinity; trinity produces all things. All things bear the negative principle (Yin) and embrace the positive principle (Yang). Immaterial vitality, the third principle (Chi), makes them harmonious."14. ~ Laozi ~ (italics added. Trans. Dwight Goddard 1919)
Our source ‘location’ (at the heart of what I’ve coined as ELself for Whole, Total, Layered-Layering self) is what I simply call Middle. I call it Middle as that, indeed, is it’s location in the centre of a map of who/how/where we are. All around that Middle are what stops us accessing that Middle… like a Gordian Knot. These are four ego identity areas or zones of Autopiloted~Autopiloting “Part-selves” – i.e. subpersonalities, parts, ego states, parts in IFS, etc. They are and yet live as scripts, habits, elements of Elself fractured. I arrived at these areas by graphing “Caring for Self vs Others” on a vertical axis crossed by being more Passive Body/Yin focused or else Active Mind/Yang focused. The four zones lead to an assembling of more practical means of understanding one’s internal and external understandings, plus in the moment as well as longtidudenal referential patterns.
Another important post in this series - thank you Jonathan!
In your early November post (Winking at World History) you made the following comment:
"It’s too deep an issue for now, but Michel Bauwens suggests what this moment may call for is not democracy as such, but what Kojin Karatani calls Isonomia. Karatani’s argument, in The Structure of World History (2014) points to a form of governance that has many democratic elements including a deeper commitment to political equality, but not the centralisation and class conflict that appears to be baked into our current democratic systems.
I am not there yet, but what if the answer to the threat of fascism is not better liberalism but something more like intelligent anarchism?"
We then shared an exchange about Karatani in the comments. In the context of the current post, I'm thinking Karatani could offer some insights to supplement those of Marvin Harris. In "The Structure of World History," Karatani is also rethinking the contributions of Marx, as he posits the idea of Modes of Exchange as a focus rather than Modes of Production. This move brings historical social formations into better focus, and gives superstructures their due consideration. Karatani's trinity is Capital-Nation-State, about which he says the following right off the bat in the Introduction:
"Today's advanced capitalist nations are characterized by a triplex system, the Capital-Nation-State trinity. In its structure, there is first of all a capitalist market economy. If left to its own devices, however, this will inevitably result in economic disparities and class conflict. To counter this, the nation, which is characterized by an intention toward communality and equality, seeks to resolve the various contradictions brought about by the capitalist economy. The state then fulfills this task through such measures as taxation and redistribution or regulations. Capital, nation, and state all differ from one another, with each being grounded in its own distinct set of principles, but here are joined together in a mutually supplementary manner. They are linked in the manner of a Borromean knot, in which the whole system will fail if one of the three is missing.
No one has yet adequately comprehended this structure..."
Karatani's new book, "Power and Modes of Exchange" should have the English translation coming out sometime this year, and should shed more light on the connections between systems, souls, and society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-MitJMEDk4&t=196s
Thanks for this lovely articulation of things that have bothered me for a while. Particularly your aesthetic dislike of the Map Makers. I also find this difficult. When involved with the Vervaeke crew, whom I love dearly, as you do Greg, I struggled with the endless map-making that was collectively preferred to relational and community-building. An “engineering” approach rather than “growing a garden”. I tended to frame it as “masculine vs feminine”, with a distinct lack of women in the space in general. This is, of course, ridiculously simplistic and perhaps requires the nuanced appreciation of “yin/yang”.
Anyway, love this piece and looking forward to the continuation. 🙏🏽❤️
“nobody should feel status anxiety about their ontology.” This is such a zinger mate! It made me smile and, in doing so, gave me a glimpse of the earlier point you made via Gebser. I’ll have to reread this and phone a friend to form some a quasi-reading group here in Melbourne.
Thank you.
🙃
In my own teaching about transformation I offer the poem,
When the three are held in tension,
a fourth arises in a new dimension.
Emergence is the scientific version of Gurdjieff's Law of Three. Cynthia Bourgeault explores this process in her, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three. Nancy Ellen Abrams celebrates emergence in her A God that Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet.
Every new arising is the result of the interplay between at least three forces or conditions. But we can pick a different three qualities to focus on. Each of these sets of three is a valid expression of the Law of Three. Each is a valid perspective. But as Ken Wilber notes, "All perspectives are valid... and partial.
Aloha Jonathan,
What a feast here for tired ears, eyes – even all the rest of me! Still, both nerdy yet capricious as I am, I found myself wanting to respond in multitudinous ways to your Triptych… i.e. in Detail! Gah – as my biggest kid often says when she is frustrated – that trip would not end … So instead I feel like I need to land on your point of a: “moral imagination being perhaps a sine qua non for the peaceful resolution of conflict”. My theory’s Problem I have been unfolding – seemingly since 3 years old – is about the Internal/External War and Peace Conundrum. It comes from my particular primary trauma – Me living between Pater and Mater (an other triad one can note…)
Now a Daoist, Psychosynthesis and Gestalt oriented psychotheraist for fifty + years, I identify deeply with the significance of ‘the three’. Its import is supported by many years in groups, marital work and in my last 25 years of finally learning deeply in a marriage. After 77 whirls around the Sun, professionally, ethically, philosophically and finally ontologically I have been increasingly sensing a Trialogue Answer that is in ‘me’, around us – and decidedly Way beyond our often stultified Wordings. The model’s first conceptual wriggles that I birthed onto pixels/paper were via poetic challenges to the world back around my father’s passing in 1996.
Put now in my present Yin/Yang/Chi terms of our Autopiloted/Autopiloting functioning, I see a Shift into a Chi based Intentionality as our crucial next step… That step is one beneath, within and beyond words. The ‘term’ Chi needs to be differentiated from (yet honoured as being entangled with) YinYang yet also Yang vs. Yin. Words have become our Biggest Trap. Without graduating to the multilayeredness of these, other seemingly inscrutable words we will struggle far more. Any word needs to be felt, tasted, absorbed, Grokked… Not Nailed down into Arcane Transmogrifications which obscure more than they elucidate. The seeming strangeness of Yin Yang and Chi allows for a fresh start for what way Dao (et al.) can be heard.
Put bluntly, I feel-for/think-on/and-embrace the Threesomeness with Enthusiasm… to me we are having a Pivotal Evolving. A deep echo for me is via one particularly relevant translation of Laozi, that to me ‘nails it”:
"Dao produces unity; unity produces duality; duality produces trinity; trinity produces all things. All things bear the negative principle (Yin) and embrace the positive principle (Yang). Immaterial vitality, the third principle (Chi), makes them harmonious."14. ~ Laozi ~ (italics added. Trans. Dwight Goddard 1919)
Our source ‘location’ (at the heart of what I’ve coined as ELself for Whole, Total, Layered-Layering self) is what I simply call Middle. I call it Middle as that, indeed, is it’s location in the centre of a map of who/how/where we are. All around that Middle are what stops us accessing that Middle… like a Gordian Knot. These are four ego identity areas or zones of Autopiloted~Autopiloting “Part-selves” – i.e. subpersonalities, parts, ego states, parts in IFS, etc. They are and yet live as scripts, habits, elements of Elself fractured. I arrived at these areas by graphing “Caring for Self vs Others” on a vertical axis crossed by being more Passive Body/Yin focused or else Active Mind/Yang focused. The four zones lead to an assembling of more practical means of understanding one’s internal and external understandings, plus in the moment as well as longtidudenal referential patterns.
To tie this up for now I’ll stop by confessing through my Brit/Canuck humour… admitting the problem I seek to solve this Way is a Search for Whirled Peas rather than Turnups, thanks… © Barry Johnston-Spooner
I agree with your last paragraph. I think that out of systems, souls and society, the systems will take care of themselves if the oneness of the Soul that connects all living things can be perceived and cultivated by society. Beauty and goodness are not as easily disguised as truth and knowledge.
I agree with your last sentence! And it’s helpful for what I’ll be writing next.
Thanks for this. I enjoyed geeking out on a Sunday lunchtime.
I like the distinction between 'descriptive' and 'generative' ontologies. It reminds me of Marx's quote about the point of philosophy. 'Generative' made me immediately think of Graeber - I think that very much captures the essence of this work.
Popper was good buddies with Hayek... I wrote a short piece 10 years ago about how Hayek's reaction to Freudianism & Marxism pushed/led him to befriend Popper (they were both part of the 'Vienna circle'). I called the piece, "Marx and Freud led Hayek to take Popper's" which I thought was hilarious. Still makes me chortle.
Anyway - at the risk of sounding as one note as I actually am - I would love to see you tackle the ontology of money, Jonathan. I'd love to know where you think it sits in the threeness? Xx
P.S. I skim-read Gregg's medium piece on the IQuad coin. Fair to say his feel for aesthetics is not his strong point. But I like that (perhaps unintentionally) by using a coin he's linking money to self (or sovereignty).
Thanks. I’ll think about money in this context. I’m aware of the Hayek/popper nexus. As an undergrad at Oxford in the late nineties there were a critical mass of people, including one close friend in my cohort, who saw the world through a kind of popper/hayek/thatcher perspective. But I find poppers three world lecture stands mostly free from those associations (and there are of course worse associations).
It is indeed important to fight cartosclerosis, truly a danger of our time.... Great synthesis of thinkers with trinity/threeness in their work. I wonder if what you're working toward is Ontology/Epistemology/Axiology combine and aggregate nonlinearly toward a new Cosmology? That's what this piece makes me think. Have you checked out "The Romance of Reality" by Azarian?
I’m not quite sure what I’m doing to be honest, but it seems to be happening…I guess I’m mostly trying to better understand the language of my organisation - systems, souls, and society - a little more deeply. I’ll check the book, and revert on your email…
Your mention of cigarettes reminded me of an uncomfortable feeling I had recently and is persisting. It may partly be owing to the largely male interest in this field but also to this sense of being drawn into the intellectualism that surrounds these issues. It is quite intoxicating and I feel the drug-like quality of getting stuck into it. I haven't yet worked this out but I sense that I am trying to articulate something that has no words. Perhaps it is that what I need is stories rather than theories.
I'm still onboard, though, as I'm sure that theories along with stories will shape our future.
I hear you on this, Richard, and I hope some of that same feeling came through here, especially towards the end. For what it's worth I have never smoked, partly because I've been a type-one diabetic since I was six, but also for all the other reasons - I did however once write an essay for a creative writing class that was about trying to understand the motivation of smokers without actually smoking, which is where I came across the book I mentioned; I guess I might publish that here at some point since I haven't yet shared it. More generally, I believe we are in a phase of history and/or the evolution of consciousness where the mental/rational structure that built and maintained the modern world is breaking down. The world is becoming not merely complicated and not even just complex, but increasingly chaotic. We can and probably should try to make it as intelligible as possible, but our efforts are likely to feel inadequate. There is a great deal going on for me personally and my organisation Perspectiva that is post-rational, and I am all for other ways of knowing. (That said, though I love stories and see their central relevance, I also think there is a risk of over-valorising them). This particular post was perhaps the most technical I have ever written on here, but it felt necessary for the range of things I am currently trying to articulate as premises for action.
Thanks, Jonathan. I often feel I’m shooting in the dark so I appreciate the affirmation. For the record I’ve never smoked either(!) but I have worked in the addiction field so have some second hand knowledge.
Nothing of us is redundant, physically or psychologically so all approaches should contribute to a vision and this post certainly demonstrates that thought.
I would highly recommend Peter Kingsley's Catafalque for this exploration. Both Kripal and Bourgeault rave about his work.
Thanks Jack, I’ll do that. I’m increasingly feeling that the suppression and forgetting of an underlying spiritual reality is the heart of the matter.
Underlying spiritual reality, or overlying? Consider "spirit" as "character." We have (perhaps) Jungian archetypes underlying, but we also have the character-models of our culturally-sustained and -sustaining realms of fictions -- overlying. We could go with Joseph Campbell, explaining the fictions through their harmony with archetypes; but that may be too reductive. There are spirits of the time, transitive, belonging to an age, or a place, which are not the eternal spirits of the archetypes.
Being 20 years older than you, I can remember the shift in character in society triggered by the Beatles (and "British Invasion" in their wake). It was substantial, tangible, fresh ... and fast. Nor was it merely ephemeral. Sometimes the change in style does remake the man, the woman, the in-between -- and our society. Or consider the influences of Humanist and Enlightenment texts, and the social groups which formed to dwell on them in clubs and coffee houses, a few centuries back, fanning the spark of Michel de Montaigne, and then later, in England, of Shaftesbury. Spirits which, while surely rooted in the unconscious, along with archetypes, yet spring in their green finery from fresh seeds thrown on the soils of minds and societies.
Ok, overlying. I see why the terms matter. I am aware for instance of Hilman's distinction between soul and spirit. I am also thinking of Gurdjieff/Bourgeault's cosmology and world's 24 and even 12. And I recently became aware of the idea of 'ontopoetics' by Freya Matthews. I suppose I mean that rather than reality being 95% known and 5% mysterious, these days I find it's more like the other way around. But I need a break for a few days from exacting terminology...
Hillman's wonderful. The simpler way of putting the question I was hand waving at may be: we may think of spirits as ancient sources, yet the most spirited of the arts are surprisingly new. And, as spirits spread in societies, they are templates through which other souls can find expression in new modes. Per Ed Sander's favorite line from Plato, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake."
So spirits are not just to be found underlying, but as such templates, socially shared. Of course, not all such templates are good. The paranoid-conspiracy spirit inhabiting and spread by the paradoxical techno-bro science-denialists manifests dark, dangerous dimensions.
I love your treatment here.
> "But how is anything like that going to happen? It seems to me that it can only happen if the changes somehow co-arise and inform and empower each other."
Bildung, or perhaps more generally wisdom/virtue cultivation, you mention as an important ingredient to the souls part of these changes. My view of wisdom/virtue is that these are practices and "knowledge" that we as agents cultivate in ourselves and each other for their own sake, and I think of them as the "true Tao" in "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao". How do you see the role of wisdom/virtue cultivation in the shaping/transformation of systems and societies? This is a topic I am exploring from several angles currently, and curious to hear if you have trod on this ground as well.
I also share your reaction to Henriques' work, some sort of aversion towards the overly-hierarchical/hyper-rational approach (prevalent in the work of "Hanzi Freinacht" as well, in my opinion), which to me exactly represents the "named Tao" in "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao".
*causal
Thanks Severin. On your first point I’ve written about it in a few places. It’s not easy to show casual influences but you can show patterns of co-arising and there are historical examples. Not sure if you’ve read my essay on Bildung but I get into it there: https://cusp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/09-Jonathan-Rowson-online.pdf
Hi again Jonathan. Did you see my other comment? Totally understand you are busy, just wanted to see if a reminder might work. I am passionate about Bildung and wisdom cultivation, so really hoping to hear from you given the value I see in your experience, knowledge, and your own wisdom
I read your essay, and I think it's fantastic, so thank you.
Are you aware of any initiatives in Norway that work on actively integrating Bildung/wisdom cultivation?
Do you and/or Perspectiva have any initiatives ongoing that relate to Bildung?
And any works (articles, books, people..) that you would particularly recommend checking out in the context of your essay that have been published since?
I have not! Will check it out, thanks
Hi Jonathan. I wonder whether the threeness isn't actually in our minds. In the past when I've tried to talk about complex systems to people I've often found myself using triads and thought I really ought to have a go with other numbers (Buddhists seem better at coming up with different length lists!). It might be partly that humans presented with a diad tend to identify with one side of it, whereas a triad does help us hold the complexity without getting overwhelmed. For instance Gurdjieff played, I think, with the idea of humans having something like seven centres of intelligence (which connects with chakras and also his obsession with octaves) but mostly reverted to talking about us being three-brained (a la Plato).
Mary Douglas' "cultural theory" has two axes (social asymmetry vs group strength) which give rise to five types (individualist, hierarchist, egalitarian, fatalist and hermit) but her followers have tended to focus on the three "active voices" of individualist, hierarchist and egalitarian.
Thanks Laurie. There's a lot to be said for fourness(!). I was joking in my first post. I am familiar with cultural theory and have played with it quite a bit. I also agree that those who use it wrongly neglect fatalism. But as for threeness being 'in our minds' - the point of what I have shared so far is that there are aspects of reality that are not in our minds, and very possibly three of them, only one of which is 'in our minds' as such. It's trickier than that too, for reasons I've mentioned and will get on to. But suffice to say I agree it's not as simple as saying there are three kinds of things in the world and that's that...
Jonathan, I am deeply engaged with your exploration of "threeness". thank you for leading this exploration in this excellent fashion.
I was quite taken with the concept of Generative Ontology and moved by the final paragraph of this post. In that regard i wanted to bring you attention to a remarkable podcast that I listened to hours before reading this post. Josh Schrei's The Emerald Podcast is usually good, sometimes excellent and then, as in this case, astounding: I could not recommend more highly this episode: On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis. I believe it is a beautiful poem, prayer, sound collage and meditation that is profoundly resonant with the idea of getting beyond maps and analysis and into a much deeper relationship with current reality -- a call for a generative ontology and practice without using those terms. Check it out at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-singing-to-the-beloved-in-times-of-crisis/id1465445746?i=1000696748899
Aloha Jonathan,
What a feast here for tired ears, eyes – even all the rest of me! Still, both nerdy yet capricious as I am, I found myself wanting to respond in multitudinous ways to your Triptych… i.e. in Detail! Gah – as my biggest kid often says when she is frustrated – that trip would not end … So instead I feel like I need to land on your point of a: “moral imagination being perhaps a sine qua non for the peaceful resolution of conflict”. My theory’s Problem I have been unfolding – seemingly since 3 years old – is about the Internal/External War and Peace Conundrum. It comes from my particular primary trauma – Me living between Pater and Mater (an other triad one can note…)
Now a Daoist, Psychosynthesis and Gestalt oriented psychotheraist for fifty + years, I identify deeply with the significance of ‘the three’. Its import is supported by many years in groups, marital work and in my last 25 years of finally learning deeply in a marriage. After 77 whirls around the Sun, professionally, ethically, philosophically and finally ontologically I have been increasingly sensing a Trialogue Answer that is in ‘me’, around us – and decidedly Way beyond our often stultified Wordings. The model’s first conceptual wriggles that I birthed onto pixels/paper were via poetic challenges to the world back around my father’s passing in 1996.
Put now in my present Yin/Yang/Chi terms of our Autopiloted/Autopiloting functioning, I see a Shift into a Chi based Intentionality as our crucial next step… That step is one beneath, within and beyond words. The ‘term’ Chi needs to be differentiated from (yet honoured as being entangled with) YinYang yet also Yang vs. Yin. Words have become our Biggest Trap. Without graduating to the multilayeredness of these, other seemingly inscrutable words we will struggle far more. Any word needs to be felt, tasted, absorbed, Grokked… Not Nailed down into Arcane Transmogrifications which obscure more than they elucidate. The seeming strangeness of Yin Yang and Chi allows for a fresh start for what way Dao (et al.) can be heard.
Put bluntly, I feel-for/think-on/and-embrace the Threesomeness with Enthusiasm… to me we are having a Pivotal Evolving. A deep echo for me is via one particularly relevant translation of Laozi, that to me ‘nails it”:
"Dao produces unity; unity produces duality; duality produces trinity; trinity produces all things. All things bear the negative principle (Yin) and embrace the positive principle (Yang). Immaterial vitality, the third principle (Chi), makes them harmonious."14. ~ Laozi ~ (italics added. Trans. Dwight Goddard 1919)
Our source ‘location’ (at the heart of what I’ve coined as ELself for Whole, Total, Layered-Layering self) is what I simply call Middle. I call it Middle as that, indeed, is it’s location in the centre of a map of who/how/where we are. All around that Middle are what stops us accessing that Middle… like a Gordian Knot. These are four ego identity areas or zones of Autopiloted~Autopiloting “Part-selves” – i.e. subpersonalities, parts, ego states, parts in IFS, etc. They are and yet live as scripts, habits, elements of Elself fractured. I arrived at these areas by graphing “Caring for Self vs Others” on a vertical axis crossed by being more Passive Body/Yin focused or else Active Mind/Yang focused. The four zones lead to an assembling of more practical means of understanding one’s internal and external understandings, plus in the moment as well as longtidudenal referential patterns.
To tie this up for now I’ll stop by confessing through my Brit/Canuck humour… admitting the problem I seek to solve this Way is a Search for Whirled Peas rather than Turnups, thanks… © Barry Johnston-Spooner