This was good, thanks. I think you hit the nail on the head when you made the distinction between the felt-sense that there were different mental models operating - either from souls > society > system or system > societies > souls . and * this * is, it seems to me, the central question of our time. This distinction is what fractured game b group (on basecamp at the time) -- between those who thought that souls had to change in order to change society/systems; and those that thought society had to change in order to change systems/souls; and those that thought systems had to change in order to change souls/society (or society/souls). This of course is a question of causality embedded in a theory of change.
It is frustrating (to me) but also salient (to me), that this is * the* question lurking in the background of all these conversations, even in the "highest" most "prestigious" group of "intellectuals" -- whether they be men or women, white/western/modern or otherwise. We might be able to correlate different cultural codes with different preferences, for example, correlating the emphasis on souls first as individualistic and hence, American-ish) or the emphasis on society as postmodern-ish, or the emphasis on system as male/galaxy brainiac-ish ... but the question still lurks.
Sooooo... we should be doing some creative induction on this very question, no?
The questions as it stands forms a vicious circle. Which means it is a flawed view, an epistemic mistake or metaphysical oversight. We need new, powerful, robust ways to describe these relationships and their causal properties vis-a-vis global scale change in "record-breaking" time.
We need people who can disembedd from their native view and work seriously on alternatives. A new Manhattan project, perhaps AI could help if it is creative enough. Just finished reading Alicia Juarraro's new book "Context Changes Everything" and although she doesn't get it right, the ways in which she gets it wrong -- because she is so damned articulate about the details -- points in a promising direction.
Anyhoo... that is what the video stirred in me -- a familiar irritation and impatience.
Thanks for the reflection. Hope you don't feel this comment is spamming your post!
One way to start is to consider that we are in the midst of global change at record speed right now-- just headed in a precarious trajectory. Is this because souls have changed? or society has changed? or the system has changed? or are souls, societies and systems changing *because of some other force/driver?*
I agree that this is one of the main underlying questions to consider. It might be that the threefold nature of historical change is both perennial and the extent to which one is primus inter pares is historically specific. My sense is that systems are currently out of control in a way that souls are not, with society somewhere in between, but obviously it's all entangled.
I like the idea of a different kind of manhattan project.
I am not sure which question as it stands is a vicious circle.
I liked the previous comment by David (above) about cosmolocalism in the context of a Gebserian view of where we are, and also in response to the Iain/Daniel difference of emphasis. For me it is always systems, souls and society (and I don't see souls as an entirely individualistic thing by the way - there is also collective interiority) and the extent to which one predominates is a kind of strategic question, but the most promising answers will stem from observing where the potential is. For me there is most potential in a shift in worldview, something like 'the flip' mentioned in a previous post.
Yes! To reference Peter Pogany once again, he discusses this problem at the end of his book "Havoc! Thy Name is Twenty-First Century: Thermodynamic Isolation and the New World Order."
"What will the parameters of a warranted new global system be? ...any consistent attempt to answer that question must imply a radically new social, economic, and political organization. 'Ay, there's the rub...'
The difference in institutional terms between [the projected Global System 3 and the current Global System 2] is so significant that bridging it is impossible without envisaging a major transformation of individual consciousness; yet, the average individual would not -- could not! -- be inwardly transformed as long as socioeconomic institutions characteristic of Global System 2 prevail.
...Through their mutual cogency, the average individual's internal and external worlds keep each other in check..."
A bit asynchronous here… Just popped into this note from Jonathan doing a little side research for a conversation with a friend, went to post a comment (below) when I spotted your response.
It's literally within the last 24 hours or so (I'm making my way through American Prometheus, an Oppenheimer story), and the exact phrase that you suggested came to me, a new Manhattan project.
I feel very strongly that there is something in this… How do we curate the wisdom, connected to strategy and action, to unleash a new atomic energy, or perhaps said another way, begin to treat cultural health and wellness at its genomic level?
In any case, your words are encouraging. Thank you :-)
I greatly appreciate this reflection - thank you Jonathan! An important insight is to realize that an evolution of consciousness is needed to make the transition that is needed in order to adequately address the metacrisis. As Peter Pogany (economist and Jean Gebser scholar) pointed out, "The collision between our civilization and its ecological constraints, along with a likely historic crisis of epic proportions, may be regarded as the struggle of integral-arational consciousness (Gebser’s “fifth structure”) to deprive overblown rationality (the deficient phase of mental consciousness) from its current preeminence. "
Pogany framed the stages of recent world history as Global System 0 (GS0), Global System 1
(GS1), Global System 2 (GS2), each of which can be considered sub-epochs within modernity, and then a future Global System 3 (GS3). His vision of Global System 3 could only be accomplished in the context of Gebser's "integral" structure of consciousness. He summarized it as two-level economy/strong multilateralism/mostly government money (maximum reserve banking). This is a potential answer to where the conversation between Daniel, Iain, and John left off - a kind of cosmo-localism (e.g. Michel Bauwens) that encompasses the need for organizing at the small and local scale, as well as appropriate world governance.
His "two-level economy" refers to one level where production in specific sectors will have to be controlled among multinational producers or nations; and at the second level, private enterprise would flourish under careful quantitative constraints. We might need to make that a three level economy, as Pogany also acknowledges the importance of local cantons meeting local needs in creative ways. Pogany states, "The business firm (the typical association of producers under GS1 and GS2) will have to reinvent itself under hard material and energy constraints."
"Strong multilateralism" is in contrast to the current "weak multilateralism" of the UN/IMF, etc. Strong multilateralism means democratically controlled world governance.
"Mostly government money, maximum reserve banking" - The monetary system would be based on a global currency issued by the global central bank. Maximum bank reserves would restrict the ability of banks to extend loans. This would not totally eliminate the creation of money through debt, but it would change its nature. It would make financial loans a modest help for bona fide entrepreneurs, and remove the current emphasis on financial speculation.
I've created a helpful 14 page document summarizing Pogany's view of "World History as the synoptic narrative of a thermodynamic unfolding."
Thanks David. Invaluable reply. I am aware of cosmolocalism but hadn’t thought of it in Gebserian terms, and hadn’t seen it as the shape of the answer to the question I posed. I’ll try to reflect further as time allows.
Thank you very much for this summary and reflection, Jonathan.
Where I got a bit hung up was with their extended discussion of the need to reform religions (or form new ones) in order to address the metacrisis. It seems very left-hemiphere-minded to sit outside major, historic religious traditions and explain to them how they need to change. (I suppose this critique is a variation of your first point.)
But there's so much of great value in this conversation—I know I'll return to it regularly. I respect these three so much and I'm grateful for the time they took to have this conversation.
I really like that insight about their different inclinations on the Soul/Society/System triplet. I felt like I was watching a supergroup like The Highwaymen come together, haha.
Its both fascinating and depressing to notice our common habit of behaving as though words define the reality of objects or experiences they merely label. Like writing the words consciousness or soul as-if people have a precise knowledge of the implied experience? For example, what is the experience of wisdom? Here is my comment from the consilience project channel:
What is Wisdom? "The ability to see through foolishness." ― John Vervaeke. What is Knowledge? "All this time we have been repeating the words 'know,' 'understand.' Yet we do not know what knowledge is." ― Plato, Theaetetus. Was Plato warning humanity about the illusory belief that we 'know' reality because we 'name' it? Yet if you look at any object you're eyes can see right now & notice how a word springs to mind through the auto-suggestion power of memory, and then ask yourself if using any other word you can think of to name that object will change the reality of what you're are seeing? Will you experience an adaptive realization about the foolishness of humanity's perceptual paradox?
Veraeke started his series on the meaning crisis with the confession "we are comprehensively prone to self-deception." I would argue that all three gentlemen are prone to the self-deception of our conscious confusion about the nature of language and the nature of reality. Daniel's systems approach to the metacrisis is admirable, yet as Albert Einstein said "can we hope to solve our problems from the same 'level' of consciousness that created them?"
Why do we tend talk about all the systems we see in our social world yet don't talk about the 'unseen' system that motivates them? Our nervous system? The subconscious orchestration of all human behaviors & how with practice behaviors become 'automatic' including our conscious process of attention & awareness. A process I would would argue is driven by the auto-suggestion power of memory & why R. D. Laing made this salient observation, "We are all in post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy."
There are mountains of scientific information about the unseen reality of the universe and more importantly the unseen reality of ourselves that imo is waiting to be synthesized, so we can begin the global task of experiencing informed realizations about the illusory nature of our vernacular (spoken by ordinary people) vocabulary. Scientifically information that enables a visceral understanding of the great wisdom story of the Christ Experience. How it can be understood as alluding to the 'optical' illusion the the Sun moves & 'cognitive' illusion inherent in the English language word 'sunrise.'
There are an estimated 7000 different languages in the world today with hundreds of different 'sounding' and different 'looking' symbols (words) for the same universally perceived objects like the sun. 8 billion people who believe they know the sun because they name it? A paradox, No? But the universal thing is: "This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question." ― Orson Scott Card
When I studied social sciences, the “difference of emphasis”, as you call it, was framed as “agency- structure”, and was understood as one of the core polarities in social sciences. Some attempts to theoretically integrate them (methodologicaly it’s easier) happened but interestingly not so much from the cultural Anglo-Saxon matrix. I wonder if/what to prioritise might be a “false dilemma”.
You mentioned the 3 wise white men. I have noticed how these meetings often miss the voice and the intelligencia of other cultural contexts. I remember noticing that already in the Rebel Wisdom days (which nevertheless I appreciated immensely).
Two other points. During the debate I sometimes felt the absence of a flavour that I can inadequately point out as the grokking of Spirit life. It is different than conceding it might exist. A very subtle but determinant factor that, once well understood, might change things in ways that are quite “incomprehensible”, even to the best of minds.
Last, I am very interested in the relation between wisdom and power and I look forward to reading your take on it.
Hi Elsa, I can't see if those two messages are identical or just similar so forgive me if I respond to the wrong one. It's a great comment.
I am aware of debates relating to structure and agency, and though I don't do into it here, the 'threeness' of the world contention is partly an attempt to resolve some of the impasses that arise from thinking only in terms of structure or agency and indeed both structure and agency. Systems, souls and society is Perspectiva's, but as I mentioned there are several other versions from several other theorists. In essence, while there is ultimately one world, that world is a relationship between three worlds that are broadly objective (structure), subjective (agency) and inter-objective/inter-subjective(Archer's 'culture'; Popper's 'World III', Habermas's 'hermeneutic', Harris's 'social structure' etc
I agree with you however that a case can be made, and I happily make it, that there is also something real about spiritual features of reality that are not merely part of these conceptual frameworks. That's partly why within systems, souls and society, Perspectiva's emphasis is 'souls', which we use as a capacious shorthand to include spirit (though I know HIlman etc make a case for spirit and soul being quite different) because we see that as somehow being the source of transformation.
I am currently reading a lot of Cynthia Bourgeault and learning about Imaginal causality - now there is someone who 'groks' spiritual life.
And while I like and admire the three men discussed in the post, I trust I conveyed that I agree with you there are a great deal of other contexts, perpsectives, epistemologies, cosmovisions, etc that were completely absent, even conspicuous by their absence in the conversation.
On the other hand, it's hardly the fault of Iain, Daniel and John that they are white men, and hardly wrong that they should speak together, nor that many are happy that they have. What is curious and arguably problematic is that this is symptomatic of the default way ideas are propagated at the moment. But then I think it's too simplistic just to include a woman or a young person or a person of colour or someone disabled just to visually mix it up. The problem is much deeper.
If you feel you'd like to help build complimentary forms of inquiry, do get in touch with Perspectiva and help us try to figure it out.
First let me acknowledge a respect for you and your work, I have been appreciating it for some time now, not least of all in your recent interview with Katie Teague (a dear friend.)
With that clarity, let me say with much intended humility, that I was a little surprised to hear you describe the conversation between the three white gentlemen ;-) in terms of its ascending and descending qualities, without inviting us into the synergy move that steps beyond that duality into something more simple, honest, and grounded in the soul of the world…
As I let these words fall here, I realize I am not being particularly diligent with my crafting of them, but I trust these crude gestures point to some things that you understand at a deeper level but have not said here.
When I studied social sciences, the “difference of emphasis”, as you call it, was framed as “agency- structure”, and was understood as one of the core polarities in social sciences. Some attempts to theoretically integrate them (methodologicaly it’s easier) happened but interestingly not so much from the cultural Anglo-Saxon matrix. I wonder if/what to prioritise might be a “false dilemma”.
You mentioned the 3 wise white men. I have noticed how these meetings often miss the voice and the intelligencia of other cultural contexts. I remember noticing that already in the Rebel Wisdom days (which nevertheless I appreciated immensely).
Two other points. During the debate I sometimes felt the absence of a flavour that I can inadequately point out as the grokking of Spirit life. A very subtle but determinant factor that, once well understood, might change things in ways that are quite “incomprehensible”, even to the best of minds.
Last, I am very interested in the relation between wisdom and power and I look forward to reading your take on it.
This was good, thanks. I think you hit the nail on the head when you made the distinction between the felt-sense that there were different mental models operating - either from souls > society > system or system > societies > souls . and * this * is, it seems to me, the central question of our time. This distinction is what fractured game b group (on basecamp at the time) -- between those who thought that souls had to change in order to change society/systems; and those that thought society had to change in order to change systems/souls; and those that thought systems had to change in order to change souls/society (or society/souls). This of course is a question of causality embedded in a theory of change.
It is frustrating (to me) but also salient (to me), that this is * the* question lurking in the background of all these conversations, even in the "highest" most "prestigious" group of "intellectuals" -- whether they be men or women, white/western/modern or otherwise. We might be able to correlate different cultural codes with different preferences, for example, correlating the emphasis on souls first as individualistic and hence, American-ish) or the emphasis on society as postmodern-ish, or the emphasis on system as male/galaxy brainiac-ish ... but the question still lurks.
Sooooo... we should be doing some creative induction on this very question, no?
The questions as it stands forms a vicious circle. Which means it is a flawed view, an epistemic mistake or metaphysical oversight. We need new, powerful, robust ways to describe these relationships and their causal properties vis-a-vis global scale change in "record-breaking" time.
We need people who can disembedd from their native view and work seriously on alternatives. A new Manhattan project, perhaps AI could help if it is creative enough. Just finished reading Alicia Juarraro's new book "Context Changes Everything" and although she doesn't get it right, the ways in which she gets it wrong -- because she is so damned articulate about the details -- points in a promising direction.
Anyhoo... that is what the video stirred in me -- a familiar irritation and impatience.
Thanks for the reflection. Hope you don't feel this comment is spamming your post!
One way to start is to consider that we are in the midst of global change at record speed right now-- just headed in a precarious trajectory. Is this because souls have changed? or society has changed? or the system has changed? or are souls, societies and systems changing *because of some other force/driver?*
I agree that this is one of the main underlying questions to consider. It might be that the threefold nature of historical change is both perennial and the extent to which one is primus inter pares is historically specific. My sense is that systems are currently out of control in a way that souls are not, with society somewhere in between, but obviously it's all entangled.
I like the idea of a different kind of manhattan project.
I am not sure which question as it stands is a vicious circle.
I liked the previous comment by David (above) about cosmolocalism in the context of a Gebserian view of where we are, and also in response to the Iain/Daniel difference of emphasis. For me it is always systems, souls and society (and I don't see souls as an entirely individualistic thing by the way - there is also collective interiority) and the extent to which one predominates is a kind of strategic question, but the most promising answers will stem from observing where the potential is. For me there is most potential in a shift in worldview, something like 'the flip' mentioned in a previous post.
Thanks for commenting!
Yes! To reference Peter Pogany once again, he discusses this problem at the end of his book "Havoc! Thy Name is Twenty-First Century: Thermodynamic Isolation and the New World Order."
"What will the parameters of a warranted new global system be? ...any consistent attempt to answer that question must imply a radically new social, economic, and political organization. 'Ay, there's the rub...'
The difference in institutional terms between [the projected Global System 3 and the current Global System 2] is so significant that bridging it is impossible without envisaging a major transformation of individual consciousness; yet, the average individual would not -- could not! -- be inwardly transformed as long as socioeconomic institutions characteristic of Global System 2 prevail.
...Through their mutual cogency, the average individual's internal and external worlds keep each other in check..."
https://integralpermaculture.wordpress.com/peter-pogany/
Bonnitta :-)
A bit asynchronous here… Just popped into this note from Jonathan doing a little side research for a conversation with a friend, went to post a comment (below) when I spotted your response.
It's literally within the last 24 hours or so (I'm making my way through American Prometheus, an Oppenheimer story), and the exact phrase that you suggested came to me, a new Manhattan project.
I feel very strongly that there is something in this… How do we curate the wisdom, connected to strategy and action, to unleash a new atomic energy, or perhaps said another way, begin to treat cultural health and wellness at its genomic level?
In any case, your words are encouraging. Thank you :-)
I greatly appreciate this reflection - thank you Jonathan! An important insight is to realize that an evolution of consciousness is needed to make the transition that is needed in order to adequately address the metacrisis. As Peter Pogany (economist and Jean Gebser scholar) pointed out, "The collision between our civilization and its ecological constraints, along with a likely historic crisis of epic proportions, may be regarded as the struggle of integral-arational consciousness (Gebser’s “fifth structure”) to deprive overblown rationality (the deficient phase of mental consciousness) from its current preeminence. "
Pogany framed the stages of recent world history as Global System 0 (GS0), Global System 1
(GS1), Global System 2 (GS2), each of which can be considered sub-epochs within modernity, and then a future Global System 3 (GS3). His vision of Global System 3 could only be accomplished in the context of Gebser's "integral" structure of consciousness. He summarized it as two-level economy/strong multilateralism/mostly government money (maximum reserve banking). This is a potential answer to where the conversation between Daniel, Iain, and John left off - a kind of cosmo-localism (e.g. Michel Bauwens) that encompasses the need for organizing at the small and local scale, as well as appropriate world governance.
His "two-level economy" refers to one level where production in specific sectors will have to be controlled among multinational producers or nations; and at the second level, private enterprise would flourish under careful quantitative constraints. We might need to make that a three level economy, as Pogany also acknowledges the importance of local cantons meeting local needs in creative ways. Pogany states, "The business firm (the typical association of producers under GS1 and GS2) will have to reinvent itself under hard material and energy constraints."
"Strong multilateralism" is in contrast to the current "weak multilateralism" of the UN/IMF, etc. Strong multilateralism means democratically controlled world governance.
"Mostly government money, maximum reserve banking" - The monetary system would be based on a global currency issued by the global central bank. Maximum bank reserves would restrict the ability of banks to extend loans. This would not totally eliminate the creation of money through debt, but it would change its nature. It would make financial loans a modest help for bona fide entrepreneurs, and remove the current emphasis on financial speculation.
I've created a helpful 14 page document summarizing Pogany's view of "World History as the synoptic narrative of a thermodynamic unfolding."
http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/attachment/download?id=5301756%3AUploadedFile%3A78202
Thanks David. Invaluable reply. I am aware of cosmolocalism but hadn’t thought of it in Gebserian terms, and hadn’t seen it as the shape of the answer to the question I posed. I’ll try to reflect further as time allows.
Thank you very much for this summary and reflection, Jonathan.
Where I got a bit hung up was with their extended discussion of the need to reform religions (or form new ones) in order to address the metacrisis. It seems very left-hemiphere-minded to sit outside major, historic religious traditions and explain to them how they need to change. (I suppose this critique is a variation of your first point.)
But there's so much of great value in this conversation—I know I'll return to it regularly. I respect these three so much and I'm grateful for the time they took to have this conversation.
I really like that insight about their different inclinations on the Soul/Society/System triplet. I felt like I was watching a supergroup like The Highwaymen come together, haha.
Its both fascinating and depressing to notice our common habit of behaving as though words define the reality of objects or experiences they merely label. Like writing the words consciousness or soul as-if people have a precise knowledge of the implied experience? For example, what is the experience of wisdom? Here is my comment from the consilience project channel:
What is Wisdom? "The ability to see through foolishness." ― John Vervaeke. What is Knowledge? "All this time we have been repeating the words 'know,' 'understand.' Yet we do not know what knowledge is." ― Plato, Theaetetus. Was Plato warning humanity about the illusory belief that we 'know' reality because we 'name' it? Yet if you look at any object you're eyes can see right now & notice how a word springs to mind through the auto-suggestion power of memory, and then ask yourself if using any other word you can think of to name that object will change the reality of what you're are seeing? Will you experience an adaptive realization about the foolishness of humanity's perceptual paradox?
Veraeke started his series on the meaning crisis with the confession "we are comprehensively prone to self-deception." I would argue that all three gentlemen are prone to the self-deception of our conscious confusion about the nature of language and the nature of reality. Daniel's systems approach to the metacrisis is admirable, yet as Albert Einstein said "can we hope to solve our problems from the same 'level' of consciousness that created them?"
Why do we tend talk about all the systems we see in our social world yet don't talk about the 'unseen' system that motivates them? Our nervous system? The subconscious orchestration of all human behaviors & how with practice behaviors become 'automatic' including our conscious process of attention & awareness. A process I would would argue is driven by the auto-suggestion power of memory & why R. D. Laing made this salient observation, "We are all in post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy."
There are mountains of scientific information about the unseen reality of the universe and more importantly the unseen reality of ourselves that imo is waiting to be synthesized, so we can begin the global task of experiencing informed realizations about the illusory nature of our vernacular (spoken by ordinary people) vocabulary. Scientifically information that enables a visceral understanding of the great wisdom story of the Christ Experience. How it can be understood as alluding to the 'optical' illusion the the Sun moves & 'cognitive' illusion inherent in the English language word 'sunrise.'
There are an estimated 7000 different languages in the world today with hundreds of different 'sounding' and different 'looking' symbols (words) for the same universally perceived objects like the sun. 8 billion people who believe they know the sun because they name it? A paradox, No? But the universal thing is: "This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question." ― Orson Scott Card
When I studied social sciences, the “difference of emphasis”, as you call it, was framed as “agency- structure”, and was understood as one of the core polarities in social sciences. Some attempts to theoretically integrate them (methodologicaly it’s easier) happened but interestingly not so much from the cultural Anglo-Saxon matrix. I wonder if/what to prioritise might be a “false dilemma”.
You mentioned the 3 wise white men. I have noticed how these meetings often miss the voice and the intelligencia of other cultural contexts. I remember noticing that already in the Rebel Wisdom days (which nevertheless I appreciated immensely).
Two other points. During the debate I sometimes felt the absence of a flavour that I can inadequately point out as the grokking of Spirit life. It is different than conceding it might exist. A very subtle but determinant factor that, once well understood, might change things in ways that are quite “incomprehensible”, even to the best of minds.
Last, I am very interested in the relation between wisdom and power and I look forward to reading your take on it.
Yes, this might not be up to the best of the minds at all...
Hi Elsa, I can't see if those two messages are identical or just similar so forgive me if I respond to the wrong one. It's a great comment.
I am aware of debates relating to structure and agency, and though I don't do into it here, the 'threeness' of the world contention is partly an attempt to resolve some of the impasses that arise from thinking only in terms of structure or agency and indeed both structure and agency. Systems, souls and society is Perspectiva's, but as I mentioned there are several other versions from several other theorists. In essence, while there is ultimately one world, that world is a relationship between three worlds that are broadly objective (structure), subjective (agency) and inter-objective/inter-subjective(Archer's 'culture'; Popper's 'World III', Habermas's 'hermeneutic', Harris's 'social structure' etc
I agree with you however that a case can be made, and I happily make it, that there is also something real about spiritual features of reality that are not merely part of these conceptual frameworks. That's partly why within systems, souls and society, Perspectiva's emphasis is 'souls', which we use as a capacious shorthand to include spirit (though I know HIlman etc make a case for spirit and soul being quite different) because we see that as somehow being the source of transformation.
I am currently reading a lot of Cynthia Bourgeault and learning about Imaginal causality - now there is someone who 'groks' spiritual life.
And while I like and admire the three men discussed in the post, I trust I conveyed that I agree with you there are a great deal of other contexts, perpsectives, epistemologies, cosmovisions, etc that were completely absent, even conspicuous by their absence in the conversation.
On the other hand, it's hardly the fault of Iain, Daniel and John that they are white men, and hardly wrong that they should speak together, nor that many are happy that they have. What is curious and arguably problematic is that this is symptomatic of the default way ideas are propagated at the moment. But then I think it's too simplistic just to include a woman or a young person or a person of colour or someone disabled just to visually mix it up. The problem is much deeper.
If you feel you'd like to help build complimentary forms of inquiry, do get in touch with Perspectiva and help us try to figure it out.
J+
Thank you, Jonathan, for your articles about Iain McGilchrist. My take at https://www.johnstokdijk.com/2011-on/my-essays/about-iain-mcgilchrist/
with quotes by you.
Jonathan :-)
First let me acknowledge a respect for you and your work, I have been appreciating it for some time now, not least of all in your recent interview with Katie Teague (a dear friend.)
With that clarity, let me say with much intended humility, that I was a little surprised to hear you describe the conversation between the three white gentlemen ;-) in terms of its ascending and descending qualities, without inviting us into the synergy move that steps beyond that duality into something more simple, honest, and grounded in the soul of the world…
As I let these words fall here, I realize I am not being particularly diligent with my crafting of them, but I trust these crude gestures point to some things that you understand at a deeper level but have not said here.
Smiles in all cases…
When I studied social sciences, the “difference of emphasis”, as you call it, was framed as “agency- structure”, and was understood as one of the core polarities in social sciences. Some attempts to theoretically integrate them (methodologicaly it’s easier) happened but interestingly not so much from the cultural Anglo-Saxon matrix. I wonder if/what to prioritise might be a “false dilemma”.
You mentioned the 3 wise white men. I have noticed how these meetings often miss the voice and the intelligencia of other cultural contexts. I remember noticing that already in the Rebel Wisdom days (which nevertheless I appreciated immensely).
Two other points. During the debate I sometimes felt the absence of a flavour that I can inadequately point out as the grokking of Spirit life. A very subtle but determinant factor that, once well understood, might change things in ways that are quite “incomprehensible”, even to the best of minds.
Last, I am very interested in the relation between wisdom and power and I look forward to reading your take on it.