Wonderful comment. Thank you, Joy. I have engaged in various kinds of spiritual practice, including forms of attention to the body, but I confess it remains difficult, as you put it, to “put my mind down.” Perspectiva (the organization I lead) is currently trying to create innovative forms of praxis that contend more directly with our historical predicament and they are post-rational rather than pre-rational. I’ll share your comment with the colleagues who are doing that, because I think it helps clarify the task.
Glad to hear it! It's an area I'm also active in, as you might have guessed. I'm actually working right now on a new course for the School of System Change and commenting on your substack seems to be turning out to be part of my non-linear percolation and design process! I also was actually was thinking of checking out your festival (only heard about you recently), but Its the same weekend as another conference I'm already attending. I must confess I was also not sure how well I would fit in? (despite the yin/yang references I am actually a practicing Sufi muslim)
hmm interesting. I have something in common with your inner judge in that I am a brown woman (technically black in the UK /US I suppose) although I am not young (also middle-aged). I have nothing personally against white men of any age - in fact I'm happily married to one. However the white middle-aged man archetype has definitely become problematic, especially in the ideas space. And you're right, it is about the epistemic monoculture. I personally think it's about a particular very yang mode of knowledge that has been caught out by the sudden deep polarity flip to yin that started happening in 2016 and then became irreversibly embedded in the pandemic. Super-rational mind-centred knowledge methods and perspectives don't work very well when the world has flipped into deep dark visceral intuitive mode and a protracted cultural death process is happening. It's like trying to be rational in a dream; you need a well developed, grounded and practiced intuitive sense that is some way beyond following your gut, and can also receive knowledge.
Unfortunately almost none of us received an education in putting our over-developed minds down and developing our intuition. Women, and people from non-western backgrounds seem to access it more easily for whatever reason (greater yin affinity perhaps), I don't know... it's not closed to middle-aged white men, but they often seem to be the most reluctant to put their minds down (with a number of honourable exceptions of course). So there is a sense of impatience when they still want to lead / dominate proceedings! Your navigation equipment is faulty now! But all of us are at sea right now really, to greater or lesser degrees, it is very discombobulating.
Regarding feelings of guilt.. obviously as an individual you can't possibly be guilty for things that happened before you were born... but there are generational loads and resonances in the body... I think all of us are being asked to process stuff that isn't 'ours' personally right now, but is still connected to us in the field. Have you ever sat with the feelings somatically, in your body?
As a white man in their fifties I resonate with a lot you have written Jonathan. Thank you for articulating it with the nuance and humour about our contradictions that is your trademark.
I don't have words. I'm stunned. This existential dialogue has been going on inside of me for years now, but muffled, and now you've channeled it out.
Holy shit.
Like hell that judge is a figment of your imagination. That judge is the collective, psychic voice of millions. For hundreds of years, millions have worshipped the white male god with all his cleverness, his ability to commit violence, conquest, and atrocity but still demand the love and loyalty of family, nation, and corporation, because "he was doing it for them," he was doing it for romanized White Jesus, purging and paving the way for the "kingdom of God."
Except now the internet has allowed enough of us to talk and share so as to lay bare the underlying violence, narcissism, and insecurity of the white male god, his narcotic narratives, his elites circles. And those of us who were shaped kneeling at his altars are now sifting through our karma and the resultant internalized thought- and behavior patterns, wondering how much we can ctrl-Z, and whether there will be any baby left after the bathwater is thrown out.
With this piece, I dare say you have talked more than one middling white man off an existential ledge.
We still need to show each other how to be quieter and step aside, but in the meantime:
Attempting to understand 'what went wrong with our world' so that we may hopefully be able to 'fix it' is understandable, desirable, and arguably very much necessary - in a sense where we are attempting to act as our own physicians, and diagnose a malady before arriving at a prescription. In this particular historical moment, this seems more exigent than ever. And yet, rising up to the occasion of Einstein's invitation - to go beyond the mindsets that created our experienced 'problems' - seems to be civilizationally challenging for us. Perspectiva's efforts - including highlighting the work of Dr. Ian McGilchrist - partially point in the direction of 'why'; suggesting that we have been emphasizing the use of one brain hemisphere (the left one), and its associated modes of cognition that tend towards the detailed, categorical and the specific - at the expense of holistic modes of understanding, that are necessarily more complex. Is it a surprise, then, that when we look at our 'problems' we tend to see distinct and neat categories - which we then naturally tend to want to adjust, to 'fix' the issue? (As a side note, a core insight of design posits that how we 'frame' a problem immediately suggests a solution - thus making design primarily a problem-finding and problem-framing field of inquiry). If we are to return - or even better, re-discover - the pre-Enlightenment cosmologies and ways of perceiving the world that might inform our modern understanding in more holistic ways, then we also have to challenge ourselves to go beyond the patina of the surfaces and manifest phenomena that reside there; and dare to learn from the cultures that have been perceiving the world (for some millennia, one might add) not as aggregations of curiously distinct and disassociated individuations, and instead as collections of actively integrated wholes. Yet even this tendency - to stay on the 'surface' of things - is not accidental and may be considered as a leftover of the postmodern movement, that argued precisely for the 'depthlessness' of things - which would make us believe that there is no 'interior' or 'depth' to anything at all. These legacies of postmodernity - although fascinating and rather useful in academic and analytical terms - didn't turn out to be great caretakers of the human soul or wonderful enablers of collective living; and the vestiges of their associated cognitive modalities, combined with the tendencies towards instrumental rationality, will arguably need to be surmounted first - before we can play Hippocrates on ourselves.
Thanks, Jonathan, for playfully shedding light on what operates in the background of our collective awareness. As a middle-aged woman who has given birth to and raised two white men, I know your story well and empathize deeply with you. I believe it ultimately comes down to our ability to appreciate our differences. While I value the ideas that many (mostly white men) bring to this ongoing conversation, I also recognize that ideas can only take us so far. There comes a time when we need something more and I don’t just mean action. There comes a time when how we relate to each other is at least as valuable as what we are relating to. A shift like this requires curiosity, as Tom Morgan suggests. Can we continue to remain curious about ourselves, as you've beautifully illustrated, and also become curious about others? Only then can we truly grow. This is what I desire more of and what drives my participation here at Substack: to be part of something greater than the sum of each of us.
Wow... guilty as charged. Or am I? I'm going to have to sit with the discomfort of these proceedings for a while.
I'd like to call Iain McGilchrist to the stand: "Each living creature (mortal thing) is unique; it is what it does; and doing it is in itself the purpose of the creature’s existence. It is also, paradoxically, through each doing ‘one thing and the same’ that they become the many different beings the poem celebrates. Difference and sameness together, never just difference or just sameness. Because of this manifest variety, general principles are less appropriate than they may customarily seem. ‘One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression’,32 wrote Blake; and ‘The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow’.33 There is an uncanny echo of this in Sitting Bull’s rejection of the white settlers: ‘If the great spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in his sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.’"
McGilchrist, Iain . The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (pp. 1304-1305). Perspectiva Press. Kindle Edition.
Brilliant comment, Terry!.. I think this is what Dr. McGilchrist, and the works of Rowson and Perspectiva, have been seemingly revealing as well - that, as a result of the process of disenchantment, we might have sort of forgotten what the world feels like when perceived through the lenses of embodied process and enacted relationship; so that, all that we see now are categories of things, instead of things in relationship to ourselves. The experience of the latter is arguably both uncomfortably un-categorizable and yet pleasantly unique and fulfilling - and something that would have made a lot of sense to Sitting Bull and Blake, I think.
Wonderful comment. Thank you, Joy. I have engaged in various kinds of spiritual practice, including forms of attention to the body, but I confess it remains difficult, as you put it, to “put my mind down.” Perspectiva (the organization I lead) is currently trying to create innovative forms of praxis that contend more directly with our historical predicament and they are post-rational rather than pre-rational. I’ll share your comment with the colleagues who are doing that, because I think it helps clarify the task.
Glad to hear it! It's an area I'm also active in, as you might have guessed. I'm actually working right now on a new course for the School of System Change and commenting on your substack seems to be turning out to be part of my non-linear percolation and design process! I also was actually was thinking of checking out your festival (only heard about you recently), but Its the same weekend as another conference I'm already attending. I must confess I was also not sure how well I would fit in? (despite the yin/yang references I am actually a practicing Sufi muslim)
hmm interesting. I have something in common with your inner judge in that I am a brown woman (technically black in the UK /US I suppose) although I am not young (also middle-aged). I have nothing personally against white men of any age - in fact I'm happily married to one. However the white middle-aged man archetype has definitely become problematic, especially in the ideas space. And you're right, it is about the epistemic monoculture. I personally think it's about a particular very yang mode of knowledge that has been caught out by the sudden deep polarity flip to yin that started happening in 2016 and then became irreversibly embedded in the pandemic. Super-rational mind-centred knowledge methods and perspectives don't work very well when the world has flipped into deep dark visceral intuitive mode and a protracted cultural death process is happening. It's like trying to be rational in a dream; you need a well developed, grounded and practiced intuitive sense that is some way beyond following your gut, and can also receive knowledge.
Unfortunately almost none of us received an education in putting our over-developed minds down and developing our intuition. Women, and people from non-western backgrounds seem to access it more easily for whatever reason (greater yin affinity perhaps), I don't know... it's not closed to middle-aged white men, but they often seem to be the most reluctant to put their minds down (with a number of honourable exceptions of course). So there is a sense of impatience when they still want to lead / dominate proceedings! Your navigation equipment is faulty now! But all of us are at sea right now really, to greater or lesser degrees, it is very discombobulating.
Regarding feelings of guilt.. obviously as an individual you can't possibly be guilty for things that happened before you were born... but there are generational loads and resonances in the body... I think all of us are being asked to process stuff that isn't 'ours' personally right now, but is still connected to us in the field. Have you ever sat with the feelings somatically, in your body?
As a white man in their fifties I resonate with a lot you have written Jonathan. Thank you for articulating it with the nuance and humour about our contradictions that is your trademark.
I don't have words. I'm stunned. This existential dialogue has been going on inside of me for years now, but muffled, and now you've channeled it out.
Holy shit.
Like hell that judge is a figment of your imagination. That judge is the collective, psychic voice of millions. For hundreds of years, millions have worshipped the white male god with all his cleverness, his ability to commit violence, conquest, and atrocity but still demand the love and loyalty of family, nation, and corporation, because "he was doing it for them," he was doing it for romanized White Jesus, purging and paving the way for the "kingdom of God."
Except now the internet has allowed enough of us to talk and share so as to lay bare the underlying violence, narcissism, and insecurity of the white male god, his narcotic narratives, his elites circles. And those of us who were shaped kneeling at his altars are now sifting through our karma and the resultant internalized thought- and behavior patterns, wondering how much we can ctrl-Z, and whether there will be any baby left after the bathwater is thrown out.
With this piece, I dare say you have talked more than one middling white man off an existential ledge.
We still need to show each other how to be quieter and step aside, but in the meantime:
Thank you 🙏
Thanks John, good to know this post made an impression. They often feel like a waste of time immediately after they are written!
Attempting to understand 'what went wrong with our world' so that we may hopefully be able to 'fix it' is understandable, desirable, and arguably very much necessary - in a sense where we are attempting to act as our own physicians, and diagnose a malady before arriving at a prescription. In this particular historical moment, this seems more exigent than ever. And yet, rising up to the occasion of Einstein's invitation - to go beyond the mindsets that created our experienced 'problems' - seems to be civilizationally challenging for us. Perspectiva's efforts - including highlighting the work of Dr. Ian McGilchrist - partially point in the direction of 'why'; suggesting that we have been emphasizing the use of one brain hemisphere (the left one), and its associated modes of cognition that tend towards the detailed, categorical and the specific - at the expense of holistic modes of understanding, that are necessarily more complex. Is it a surprise, then, that when we look at our 'problems' we tend to see distinct and neat categories - which we then naturally tend to want to adjust, to 'fix' the issue? (As a side note, a core insight of design posits that how we 'frame' a problem immediately suggests a solution - thus making design primarily a problem-finding and problem-framing field of inquiry). If we are to return - or even better, re-discover - the pre-Enlightenment cosmologies and ways of perceiving the world that might inform our modern understanding in more holistic ways, then we also have to challenge ourselves to go beyond the patina of the surfaces and manifest phenomena that reside there; and dare to learn from the cultures that have been perceiving the world (for some millennia, one might add) not as aggregations of curiously distinct and disassociated individuations, and instead as collections of actively integrated wholes. Yet even this tendency - to stay on the 'surface' of things - is not accidental and may be considered as a leftover of the postmodern movement, that argued precisely for the 'depthlessness' of things - which would make us believe that there is no 'interior' or 'depth' to anything at all. These legacies of postmodernity - although fascinating and rather useful in academic and analytical terms - didn't turn out to be great caretakers of the human soul or wonderful enablers of collective living; and the vestiges of their associated cognitive modalities, combined with the tendencies towards instrumental rationality, will arguably need to be surmounted first - before we can play Hippocrates on ourselves.
Thanks, Jonathan, for playfully shedding light on what operates in the background of our collective awareness. As a middle-aged woman who has given birth to and raised two white men, I know your story well and empathize deeply with you. I believe it ultimately comes down to our ability to appreciate our differences. While I value the ideas that many (mostly white men) bring to this ongoing conversation, I also recognize that ideas can only take us so far. There comes a time when we need something more and I don’t just mean action. There comes a time when how we relate to each other is at least as valuable as what we are relating to. A shift like this requires curiosity, as Tom Morgan suggests. Can we continue to remain curious about ourselves, as you've beautifully illustrated, and also become curious about others? Only then can we truly grow. This is what I desire more of and what drives my participation here at Substack: to be part of something greater than the sum of each of us.
Wow... guilty as charged. Or am I? I'm going to have to sit with the discomfort of these proceedings for a while.
I'd like to call Iain McGilchrist to the stand: "Each living creature (mortal thing) is unique; it is what it does; and doing it is in itself the purpose of the creature’s existence. It is also, paradoxically, through each doing ‘one thing and the same’ that they become the many different beings the poem celebrates. Difference and sameness together, never just difference or just sameness. Because of this manifest variety, general principles are less appropriate than they may customarily seem. ‘One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression’,32 wrote Blake; and ‘The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow’.33 There is an uncanny echo of this in Sitting Bull’s rejection of the white settlers: ‘If the great spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in his sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.’"
McGilchrist, Iain . The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (pp. 1304-1305). Perspectiva Press. Kindle Edition.
Brilliant comment, Terry!.. I think this is what Dr. McGilchrist, and the works of Rowson and Perspectiva, have been seemingly revealing as well - that, as a result of the process of disenchantment, we might have sort of forgotten what the world feels like when perceived through the lenses of embodied process and enacted relationship; so that, all that we see now are categories of things, instead of things in relationship to ourselves. The experience of the latter is arguably both uncomfortably un-categorizable and yet pleasantly unique and fulfilling - and something that would have made a lot of sense to Sitting Bull and Blake, I think.
“Mixed-race children”… ok, but which races?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_definitions_of_races_in_India